‘I want you to repent; I want you to tell us where the bodies are.’ Ariel Dorfman, asked what he would like to say to the newly arrested Pinochet
In the Atacama desert
it rains the first rain in a hundred years
and seeds
half-shrivelled in their resignation
force themselves open
stare at the deep drugged sky with unknown flowers.
In the Andes
transported tenderly in the beaks of condors
in Temuco, by the silent railway line
in the shrouds of rain
in Tierra del Fuego, sheltering underneath
the restless ice
turning to coral in the accepting ocean
having been dropped living from helicopters
having been buried
in heaps like discarded corncobs, having been
young fierce with gentle arms
wrapped round each other in sleep, with chanting voices,
once tortured, now the bodies
having been spirit and passion, are assembling
their flowing black hair, their bones, are pushing up
through the crust of the planet
waiting for you to speak.