Memorial
By Diana Anhalt
Massive steel slabs, like hostile vegetation,
rise twelve meters high. This monument
of rusting pages thrusts upwards, outwards.
It walls in the trees of Chapultepec Park,
and casts shadows on mourners who come
bearing words for their desaparecidos.
Armed with fistfuls of chalk, a jack knife, a car key,
people punish the pillars with prayers, imprecations:
May they drown in their victims’ blood, Dios santo.
They finger the letters: Pinche gobierno, we don’t need
a monument. What about justice? And give voice
to the slabs: They left me nothing, not even a grave.
No one signs their names. Across the face of a pillar
vertically placed vague outlines of white chalk fade
to ghostly images, come back to haunt us:
Our country has lost its way and God has lost his ears.
Source: http://www.constellations-lit.com/
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