One Thing I Know About the Dead; Secrets
One Thing I Know About the Dead
In a place that needs no naming
men with guns and long steel blades
ride in trucks from village to village
chasing women and children
scrambling like hens on the dusty road
(the men were hunted yesterday).
Now a woman spreads her arms and falls
to cover her child stumbling away
from the arc of the swinging blade.
It doesn’t reach the child
and swings through the mother’s neck.
The child scurries to the underbrush.
The next morning the trucks come back,
and the child, run down again,
is slit through by the arc of the swinging blade.
Nothing intercepts its thrust,
no sudden dust-swirl clouds the view.
The Earth is still.
No thunderous apparition interrupts.