Out by the river the children’s play
with corpses in scummy tide pools.
Some of the corpses lie motionless
on the river shore. Other floats quietly
in the breaking waves of tangled time.

Most are mutilated, throats slashed,
heads missing, a scattering pale forms
indistinguishable from one another
except for the ways in which they died.

A several foot away from the shore,
a woman killed with her baby, still
strapped to her back, floats among the reeds
through swampy grassland, out into the
vast stillness of the blood soaked homeland.

How evil it is, O Lord!
How amazing it is of the people
to kill their own brothers and sisters
and decapitate the roots of the human life.


Copyright 2007 Bhuwan Thapaliya