BEARING WITNESS (Summer 08)

BEARING WITNESS
To speak incoherently,
Indeed, intangibly
Yet so forcefully –
In abstract articulation,
Undeterred condemnation –
Speaking of souls,
but living deep within
images and analogies –
Drawing from the force of
dying flowers,
nomadic seeds,
and rising suns;
of horrors unmatched
by expressions in nature –
To speak a truth unscientific,
Transcendent of measure
Yet a truth so a propos,
so timeless and invisible
that even the cruelest
may be given their moment
to taste a clear tear and atone.
This is the task, the calling,
of a poem that condemns subtly,
Like lonely drops of rain
that taunt desperate farmers:
A reminder, yes, a recollection
of those who were drowned
While drinking dirty water.
Yetvart S. Majian