The dead without faces
run out like patients
when the door of the intensive care unit opens
carrying pouches of heart, pouches of urine
The dead running toward the path to the underworld
turn into stone pillars when they look back and their eyes meet
their past
The dead in their sacks look out with eyes brimming with salt
water
The dead become pillars of water as their tears melt their bones
The dead, gone forever, departed before you,
pull amniotic sacs over their heads and get in line to be born
again
and say that they need to learn their mother tongue all over
again
You’re not there when they awake or even when they eat
breakfast
When the dead swarm down the mountain
like children who pour out of the door of the first-grade room
carrying their notebooks and shoe bags
a four-ton bronze bell with a thousand names of the dead
engraved on it dangles from the helicopter
The helicopter flies over a tall mountain to hang the bell at a
temple hidden deep in the mountains
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