The Skeletons

l: photographer unknown, 0172 (unidentified prisoner; 1975-9)

r: photographer unknown, 0144 (unidentified prisoner; 1975-9)

both photos, property of the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide

“thus, when traveling in Ersilia,

you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls that do not last,

without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away:

spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form”

-- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Gli Scheletri

C’è una guerra accesa

sulla pagina bianca.

Le parole muoiono.

Le parole si ammazzano

nel campo.

un soffio, un colpo—

e la sangue delle parole accende.

Le parole bruciano

Come la croce

Come la pelle

completamente commestibile al foco.

Che resti?

Della cenere e dell’osso

Che resta?

Si fa un resoconto,

si presta la vigilia della lingua

avvolgendo gli scheletri in un lenzuolo del bimbo.

Si recita la scena delicata dalla Pietà

Con un sacco delle parole morte.

Si fa,

Un poeta.

The Skeletons

There is a war raging

on the white page.

The words die

They kill each other

On the field.

one blow, one blow,

And the blood of the words

Ignites

Like the cross

Like the skin

Completely consumed by flame.

What remains?

Bone and ash

What remains?

One makes a report.

Lends the vigil of the tongue.

Folds the skeletons in swaddling cloth.

Recites the tender Pietà scene

With a sack of dead words.

One makes,

One poet.

A new website, memoryandjustice.org,

will serve as a forum for discussions

centered around art and cruelty,

i.e. memory sites and their accompanying issues:

their use and abuse, design, meaning, function, destruction and damage.

What they impart to the living,

what secrets they harbor of the dead.

photograph of Choeung Ek Center of Genocide Crimes, by Louis Bickford