TERRA COGNITA

Of Rwanda, April to July, 1994,
and all that went before and will come after.

Gerard Van der Leun
December, 1995 -- June 2004 | New York City | California |

1.
This rusted field, these shattered skulls, this stained and ancient road
that runs beside the bleached river where carp fatten on brown dugs
and shoals of human offal until, sated, they drowse above the slime.
The place of iron dust expands, and downstream shallows roil
choked with the crocs' warm morning meals -- the flesh-flecked bones
glued with rags and gristle, caught between the pointed teeth
like some vile floss of torn tendons, all breathing flesh consumed.
Upstream our evening's dinner entertainment continues....
Unspeakable acts involving children and machetes
unfold repeatedly until the thin hacking arms cramp,
and fingers are flung into the stream like feathers plucked from birds.
In the still and baking heat, the ears of women, dry and crisp,
whirl in the disinterested wind...and so one turns to go, but still...

They all drift down, they all drift down
            (not leaves in an autumn breeze,
            not in some lyric poem of windblown lace,
            nor Japanese trifle of dank moss and leaves)
drift down like chunks of poaching pork,

until the brain is singed, burnt bare,
flayed open and exhausted of all care,
all sense of rage -- until the phrase
Can you imagine? is answerable
only with one word, No,
and the single image that might impinge
on drowsy lurkers in plush cave chairs
is a jet of blood erupting in a syringe
plunged into an eye, that the seeing beast
blind itself at last with sleep,
and away, turn away, turn away.