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| JD Kruger, GLP4 |
Elegy
for Jorge
Like
a song for my father I recite
translated
memories broken words cannot translate
the
dancing voice of absence and presence,
laughter
and bullets, a Chilean sense of rhyme.
As
feet curled cobbles of Montreal streets
the
sailor beat waves as conductors charge
Music
just
below the surface guiding the mind
the
reflection of a spider gliding a pond
God-rays
streaming like banners arched behind
and
in front, piercing the birch-bark pond, bending light.
The
spider sees itself against the sky
grasping
claws and clouds like an eight-pronged paper-clip.
Only
when meeting other open spheres
it
hears the dawn,
for
whom was this song sung by thee?
The
aubade not recovered but discovered
harmony.
Instruments are tuned by human hands.
Hands
that thread needles, cup water, build, write
are
hands that pull pins from grenades, swollen with pride.
These
hands are dumb to the earth. These hands shield
the
light. Jorge ashes his Camel with these hands.
Jorge
speaks with peripheral vision
always
within still always without the subject.
But
he is reluctant to talk of death
like
an agnostic pacing around a church-yard.
(Mothers
of stillborn children dot the field,
full
smiling gums, balancing baskets and babies
they
smile because they can no longer cry.)
Jorge
strains as he recalls his brother's body
his
brother who could not pass for peasantry,
too
noble and too beautiful, 6'4", green eyes,
to
hide in a village church-yard or spire
to
hide from MIR's soldiers of neighbouring cities
with
a faction that vowed not to exile
in
seventy-three (year of my birth) his brother
went
missing, his body would not wash up,
no
bill for the bullet was mailed to the family
who
had been pillaged by soldiers that missed,
for
their greed, the brother's hidden gun and grenades.
Jorge
passes the ash-tray.
He does not -
to
talk to cry to talk to cry to talk to -
He
would rather dance about the Movement
at
fourteen they told him he was too young to join
he
should get laid and smoke grass and grow up.
But,
below the surface, an unknown force pulled him
forward
like a wind caught in a white sail
a
wind who stirs the buds of spring to open light,
a
wind within our chests who vibrates chords
a
wind while rippling ponds forms silence into words.
-- JD Kruger, GLP4.
November
4th - Rabin gunned down.
Callous
fingers squeeze a trigger
and
release. A right-winged son
enflamed
with venom
slays
the soldier of peace for his Labour.
All
brotherhood is severed.
The
repetition of the ancient embrace
of
shepherd & hunter
could
not forestall the war -
the
chemicals, the scud missiles
the
homes transformed to bubbles
cellophane
suffocating civilization.
It
seems an already rifted nation is split
by
the simple hand of a traitor.
Could
all the salt of the Dead Sea
restore
this state to civil purity?
JD Kruger, GLP4.
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