war_poetry | Andrea Porter, 'Heike with her Dictionaries'

Heike with her Dictionaries

Alone in a small commercial hotel you summon other thoughts,
tell yourself the shower curtain is the colour of a silk scarf
you bought in Dublin last November, drink lukewarm herbal tea
from a mug you have carried with you since Kiev,
remember rice on a patterned plate in Cambridge,
how the weight of technical dictionaries strained
your back on the train home from Frankfurt airport.
The tiny buff tag on the tea bag catches you out.

Numbering evidence from Bosnia.
Sixteen days of written statements
made to a commission in The Hague.
Four days of photographs.
Forensic. Focused. No faces.
A metre stick laid beside a trench gave a sense of scale.

Buff cardboard tags on body parts.
Tissue samples. Skulls. Bones.
Catalogued. Identity unknown.
Shown neat rowed to the lens.
Rewind.

J five stroke seven four nine.
M eight oblique three two one.
Translate the numbers. Never stumble over one.
Pour from one jug of language to another.
Never lose a single drop of blood.
Never stop to open flood gates to unprofessional emotion.
Justice requires precision.

Life is in the detail. Death is in the detail.

Fast forward. Fast fast forward.
Summered forest floor green flushed with nettles.
Echolalia of meaning in your head, different taste in your mouth.

They brought six soldiers here. They dragged six boys here.
They executed them here. They shot them here.
Gesture left to speak.
They buried them here. They hid them here.
Gesture left to speak.
Pause. Rewind. Play Kosovo.

by Andrea Porter