Maguindanao Ghazal

This entry is part 36 of 63 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2011

 

Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
(Let justice be done though the heavens fall.)

 

The bodies are no longer there. They’ve dug them up
and carried them off, exhumed from shallow graves.

They’ve laid them out and counted, set torsos and limbs
aright, sewed shut the seams. The sea cannot be their grave.

Who made the pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge?
They gored and slit the very air. Oh most depraved.

Not even the womb was sacred. Not kin, not friend, not
bystander. Not hair, not skin struck by gun barrel or stave.

What are they worth, who are no longer here? Warped leaves
in the canopy condemn the unresolved: they won’t forgive.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Series Navigation← Ghazal: ChimeraeInsurgent Song →

One Reply to “Maguindanao Ghazal”

  1. http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/2010/04/rage-poem-on-maguindanao-massacre.html
    Reposted as an au courant comment, “A Rage Poem on the Maguindanao Massacre” is one of those poems collected by Philippine Graphic Magazine editor and poet Joel Pablo Salud. Luisa was one of the earliest contributors to the collection. Still unresolved, this heinous murder of civilians has garnered the spotlight once again as former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been indicted rigging an election which triggered the massacre to silence witnesses and protesters by one of her political allies in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, in the Philippines Mindanao region. The rage will not fade away soon. —Albert B. Casuga 11-24-11

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