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.
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