The Disappeared Poem by Martina E. Elenbaas

This poem is dedicated to all the men, women and children who have been
tortured and murdered and lost. People call them 'The Disappeared.'

All over the world
the disappeared cry out
to you and me.
Buried or drowned,
their voices rise
out of the ground,
out of the stones.

Their voices are
in the sound of the waters,
in the silence of the night,
under the noises of the day,
you can hear them,
listen closely.

They accuse, accuse us,
their bleached,
frail bones
are full of speech,
not to be stilled.

Some, their faces blind,
are turned to the sun,
the rattle of their skeletons
echoes in the wind of time.

Their last gasps, full of
accusatory cries, beg
to all who listen:
'Avenge us,
find our pitiful pieces
and take us,
show our sorrows
to our torturers,
our captors,
find our decapitated heads,
our trunks without limbs,
assuage our pain!

The disappeared,
like seeds put in the earth,
grow strong,
flowering blame,
filling the very air
with their screams,
like un-ending blooms.