Never, Forever

The visions descend
with vengeance. 
The words of victims
empty into decay.

The scenes, more 
than readers want to see
in their newspapers
with morning coffee.

There is no way
to say, “Here is Rwanda,”
just love this land
rugged in earth steam. 
The peaks, now shrouded,
the hollowing of souls,
defy that prayer. 

Writing genocide
we drove those roads
across fields, cutting
deep creases into horizons
baptized in rituals
of fire and flood.

Stilled, and yet
after years and years
those images turn and turn – 
my melancholy, my madness.

No one heard
the boy’s pleas
as he ran bleeding
into the valley
of banana groves
haunted and gnarled.

Somehow, bony arms,
legs escaped, escaped
the frenzy of death clutching 
at the country church.

Fathers and brothers sent them,
believing in God’s refuge.
Thousands died, their bodies 
shredded into the wooden floor.

Bones and skulls decompose
in a mass of bloodied clothes
and scattered pots and books – 
all the flock could carry.
A pencil lies
on the floor.

My words fail, fall
rot in notebooks, shelved.
I stare into that, but can’t describe it.
Couldn’t imagine it, even,
except there it was.

These were people. 
This was flesh, molting
from red to brown
to vapor, foul, enduring.

The Virgin Mary, cast
against a mural of too-blue
sky and surreal hues, 
rests as witness
to the sacrifice of innocents.

That 9-year-old boy recalls
men binding his mother, 
brothers, sisters with 
cord and rope. The men 
thrust knives and spears 
into the hands of children 
and yelled: “Kill! Kill!”

A neighbor, the father
of a schoolmate, now
gargoyled in hate
raises a machete higher
and higher. The blade 
hacks the boy’s skull, 
his blood oozes cold
onto bare shoulders.
He runs and runs and runs. 

Those painted skies
pale at the altar
where spirits in silhouette
look down on me. 

I can’t forget that. 
Never.
Now, forever. 

The poem “Never, Forever” is included in the anthology, Something to Write Home About. Copyright 2005, Jacana Media.