WE DEAD INDICT

No, our graves bear no mouldering crosses,

nor gravestones arched and proud,

no, there are no wreaths, nor wrought iron tresses,

angels with their heads bowed,

nor willows, laurel golden-flaking,

nor everlasting candle flames.

We rot in pits, lime-slaked, forsaken,

which storm-winds scrape, our bones to claim.

The time-bleached skulls of hopes forlorn

tremble on barbed-wire fences, torn,

our ashes, wind-borne, scattered wide,

urns by the thousand smashed, denied.

Binding the world we form a chain,

seeds blown by wind to distant shores,

we count days, months, years that remain,

patient, with nothing to hurry for.

Down here, our numbers grow and grow,

upwelling day by day, until

the swell that bloats the fields you sow,

will rend asunder the earth you till.

And we’ll rise, making dread our own,

skull upon skull and bone on bone,

in mankind’s face yell,

with great might:

We dead indict!