Portside

The  Disappeared

By Kathleen Weaver

juntos  iremos  unidos  en  la  sangre,
ahora  y  en  la  hora  de  nuestra  muerte
--Víctor  Jara

The  mothers  walk  in  an  imperfect  circle.
The  photographs  they  hold
become  a  portion  of  lost  sleep.

A  vanishing  point  in  the  landscape:  the  mothers
lose  track  of  it;  it  was
there,  it  was,  along  the  desert  coast.

In  a  European  painting
a  mother  ascends  through  vaulting  clouds,
heavens  open,  the  mood  victorious.

Or:  an  aura  of  transcendent  suffering
surrounds  Mary,  the  same  age  as  her  son
in  Michelangelo’s  Pietà.

A  wind  exhorts
the  hours  to  fill  with  rain,  rain  and  return.

Until  there  is  only  myrrh
to  anoint  the  bodies.
Bodies  flung  from  military  planes  into  the  sea.

Or  buried  in  abject  secret.
In  the  Atacama’s  extreme  aridity,
survivors  sift  dirt,
fingering  rocks  that  might  disclose  a  mass  grave.

To  identify  a  bone  or  bone  fragment,
that  would  be  an  end.
The  mothers  are  on  their  own.

Back  then  to  the  cradle
and  the  swaddling.
Hold  the  flailing  arms  close  to  the  body.

Kathleen Weaver is a poet and translator, especially of Cuban poets. She is also the author of a biography with poetry translations: Peruvian Rebel, The World of Magda Portal, With a Selection of Her Poems (Penn State University Press). Her first book of poems Too Much Happens, is published by The Post-Apollo Press. Her poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, Chariton Review, Cimarron Review, Poetry Flash, among others. She lives in Berkeley, California.