THE SILENCED

For them we must speak

words never again spoken,

words smothered by the thick palms

of dictators in dark chambers

where it becomes impossible to breathe;

 

where everything they have seen and heard

becomes so vast, so complex

within the confines of the human heart

they have no words to describe

what they have seen and heard and thought;

 

for them, the silenced, pushed whirling

out of of airplanes over oceans

through air and clouds,

drugged, bound, gagged,

we must tell their stories;

 

and of those silenced in short, obscure headlines,

forgotten behind concrete walls, lost in caverns

where words do not echo;

 

and for those beaten and drained of what

they have seen and heard

along the streets of the abandoned;

 

for those exiled into the eternity of never been,

thousands of miles above

the killers who condemned them to silence;

 

thousands of miles above the hundreds

in walled villas and high rises

deaf to the words and screams

of those never again to speak