Wednesday, January 14, 2015

POW Memorial, Sandakan, Borneo.




There is a dark grove of trees on the hill
of Sandakan,
where the prisoners finished their lives,
or began to finish them
in unspeakable ways,
no gentle deaths allowed.

The powerful ones showed
such ingenuity in torture.
How to slowly crucify.
How to punish the body
with heat and starvation
before merciless death.

The men were brave,
the survivors said,
when ulcers ate their legs,
perhaps a whimper or two.
The jungle took their bodies.
Felt hats decaying in the undergrowth.

Then the death marches,
to finish them off in Ranau
under the shadow of Mount Kinabalu.
The barely-alive still hoping, somehow,
before the final shots from
men obeying orders.

This story has many variations
on war’s hills and valleys.
What are the questions
for captive and captor?
Both answers hide within us, waiting

for history’s awakening.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The Pilgrim Road to Santiago


(For Nerma)   

I met a young girl
on the road to
Santiago de Compostela
when the journey was nearly done.

Her load she bore lightly
as she shortened her pace for mine.
I am not a man,
but when the day comes,
for counting the memories
I will recall her beauty.

What gift could be given
along the way, taking each step
closer to Santiago’s gleaming city?
The spires there heavy with ancient meaning,
stone angels in perpetual
supplication and holy desire.

What could I say of life?
There were things I could have said,
but was I able to tell her
what I could not tell myself?
Walking as the dawn broke behind us
I thought to open her eyes
to the magpie’s call
in the dark cathedral of the morning.

Will you be sorry at the end
for the goal we wish for?
But it is not the end, she said.
She showed me the stones
that she carried, each one
fitting the palm of her hands.

What could I tell her?
The vines touched with gold
with September’s chill,
dogs howling at our passing.

And when she was gone
with her swift tread
my heart ached
with the sweetness of life.
Maybe what I sought
had travelled with us.

The gift had been given.