Juliette Rossant

"Death in Hojali"

1.
I can not stop a moment in that country.
Is it a gift
to be eleven
and know how to answer the door?
(She has a baby on her back
and the bullet goes right through both.
The extra weight means
her body collapses downward
as if sitting on the door sill
snapping beans)
I can not sleep a moment in that country
where the earth is shifting
a splinter at a time,
enough to ignite gases,
unsettled, unstable,
(who can question
natural disasters,
but they have raised up their hands
and I must look elsewhere
for answers).

2.
God is on this side of the wall,
or is god on the other?
God is in this village
or is he in the one on the next ridge?
I am calling God,
but so are you,
I show God the death here
but it is over there, too.

3.
A soldier sings to us,
"In this land I carry you...."
Obliterate this village,
easy enough -
but we can not collect
the parts of the village
and re-shape the rest
into a memory
of men we met,
a village we slept in.

4.
Maybe you realize
you don't want the answer,
Four years old
with your ears stuffed,
pointer in the waxy inside,
maybe you are shouting,
maybe you are not four.

5.
I have not come close enough to tell you,
to look at you.
I have not come so far to name you,
to open school books belonging to you.
I have not told your story
but my own.
I stand at a distance -
from here you look alive,
from here I shout:
"You need stitches, new clothes, a hat..."
I take out my camera
to photograph you
and stop a soldier
from taking a portrait of
the two of us.
I never come close enough.

6.
I live somewhere else
and these days
that is just too far.

(back to Stonefence Review Vol. XXII No. 1 Fall 2000...)

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