The Disappeared
By Norbert Hirschhorn
What makes us human is soil.
Even landfill of bones, shredded jeans;
mass graves paved over for parking.
What makes us human are portraits
—graduation, weddings—
mounted in house shrines and on fliers, Have You Seen?
Names inscribed around memorial pools
or incised on granite. Names waiting,
waiting for that slide of DNA, or any piece of flesh—
for the haunted to be put to rest.
What makes us human is soil.
To stare into a hole in the ground,
fill with the deceased, throw earth down,
place a stone. Bread. Salt.
For Fouad Mohammed Fouad
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