At The Pit

Weightless relics in army blanket shrouds,
piled before the pit, appear too stick-like, too numerous,
to be have once been human.
The mind is wrenched,forced to see things less horrid;
The crows are healthy, the flies fat and fast.
Emotions must be numbed to prevent overwhelming despair.
The youngest, the oldest,the ones who died exhausted
from the struggle to bring them all here,
are piled the highest at the edge of the pit.
They will be the first to be desecratedby jackals and Caterpillar blades.
Just at dawn, before sounds amplify,
before the stench breaks free of its fragile,dewy net,
the corpse heap seems to waver.
It heaves from the pressures released
as bloated bodies collapse and give into the weight of friends,
ripples as the heat of the rotting rises up to meet the sun.
Then, the mothers come.
The empty mothers with opaque eyes,
memory muffled wails, halting, half recited prayers
whose words are the lyrics for an orchestra of waking flies.
The mothers will not hear them,
or see the worms in their children’s eyes
or be fooled by the prayer’s most holy disguise
or stay to see the dead sealed off from the sky.
The mothers have removed themselves,
have resigned themselves.
Only their strength of heart has borne them this far.
Now, they wait.
They must be the last layer on the sad grave.
Their bones must be the headstones,
the guardians of the martyrs beneath…
the last to fall from the light of hope.


Mike O'Connell
2009