by Brett Rutherford
The
bishop’s weak lung
wheezes
at night
beneath the blankets,
not
gone, not even
“disappeared”
like those
arrested
and vanished
in
the time of strict
government.
As soon
as
he closes one eye
the
air sac expands
and
it blasts one note,
one
drone
like
the idiot half
of
a bagpipe.
Don
– don – don
Donde
– donde – donde
Where
– where – where
the
unburied dead,
the
unabsolved,
the
ghosts denied
the
moment of unction?
Don
– don – don,
Donde
– donde – donde,
one
note from
dusk
to dawn
in
thirty thousand beats
of
monotonous asking
where
– where – where
our
blackened bones,
our
dust, our skulls
a-crush
beneath some
concrete
stadium?
Lung-bladder
ghost,
Guilt’s
bagpiper,
vacuum
bag inhaling
his
withered prayer.
No
sleep for him!
He
tosses and turns.
Some black-robed brothers
have helped the
Government;
others
have hidden students,
professors and artists;
others have
waved two hands,
ten fingers wagging, heads
shaking no,
eyes firmly closed.
Nothing, I have heard nothing.
I have
not read the papers.
I will of course
light candles if I am
asked.
How
many sleep well?
How many sleep at all?
Which of them heard
the executioner’s confession
and said nothing in turn
to his own confessor,
passing it to God
only
without a further thought?
How many imsomniacs
hear lung or
heart,
ribcage or ear’s cavity,
or an ever-throbbing
vein
that will not let them sleep,
echoing:
Don
– don – don
Donde
– donde – donde,
Where
are the Disappeared?
