With gratitude to Jim Harney, for the words and photographs that filter the message of this poem.
Jim was artist-in-residence for Posibilidad, a Bangor,Maine, based nonprofit organization that seeks to put a face to the suffering U.S. economic and political policies cause to the poor around the world. Jim died on December 26, 2008.
Apparitions in the dark hold me hostage to stories of children who roam
garbage heaps and play in playgrounds laced with uranium-depleted sand.
Baby-faced boys heft AK-47s and stare at me with vacant bravado,
brace themselves, arm in arm, like buddies in a beer hall, as if their youthful
solidarity could protect them from the forces that stole their birthright of joy.
Guatemalan women file silently past in striped skirts, embroidered blouses,
shawls draped over shoulders, hair upswept into elaborate headdresses.
Their faces are full of beauty, arms laden with small wooden crosses
emblazoned with the names of the martyred. Their gaze forms an inquisition,
so I turn, burrow into sheets of cotton, pull the quilted comforter beneath
my chin and mutter a fretful sigh before drifting again among women
who strap babies to their breasts and turn their tired eyes
to me, an American mother, who, like them, wants most of all
to keep her children safe. I am unable to ignore the pleading
in their dark brown eyes, the resignation on faces
too used to injustice to hope for anything more.
Night after night, una madre de los desaparecidos, crystalline complexion framed
by brilliant white kerchief, stares at me from the wells of her eyes. An icon
of desirability, she has little to offer those who might love her—no joyful receipt,
no hopeful trust, not even resistance. She is the face of El Salvador’s outrage,
yet she does not weep or rage.
The grip of her expression ripples through my slumber. Finally, I break away
and, with relief, smile at an elderly woman who sits quietly on a wooden bench,
arthritic hands folded on her aproned lap. She leans against a stone wall;
perhaps it offers a cool respite from the Chiapas heat. She is my grandmother,
seated in my childhood kitchen. The lines of her face tell a story,
but it is not my grandmother’s story. I frown, until her smile shows me
there’s reason for hope. I weep with shameful gratitude.
Remember the martyrs left behind in the jungles of Guatemala.
Presente!
Remember those who’ve fallen victim at the wall of death
along the US-Mexican border.
Presente!
Remember the undocumented, decapitated
by el monstro de hierro in the Arizona desert.
Presente!
If a homeless migrant can feed a gringo on the streets of Arriaga,
what is not possible?
If an Iraqi dentist can clean an American’s teeth in Baghdad,
what is not possible?
If the photographs of a single man can give voice to the voiceless,
what is not possible?
If a God of the living could fill us all with the courage to act,
what could be possible?
Look into the eyes of the children. Feel the anguish in the gaze of the madres.
As the shutter opens on the heart of their resistance, open your own eyes
to the stories behind the photographs. In them lies the hope of the excluded.
