Genocide

Poetry by Omar Sabbagh
Photo by Mohammed Jadallah Salem

Words grow honest of a sudden,
admit their telltale lie, the secret
of the secret hiding-place
to which they were banished, long before
the foolish decencies of your approach.

And you’ll never find them again,
I fear, though you may scratch-at
the earth, the ground, with a bitter nail
and rage at the soil where they’re hidden
in those deeps you’ll never reach.

There are lessons, after all,
that even the swansong of a finished teacher cannot teach,
roads that are pathless and forbidden,
knotting each effort of your wheeling mind.

The face of words grows pale in its pallor
and you cannot speak – as blood-red
turns through the bright, unending white
by which the dead alone can carry the dead.

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