Bodies

the bodies appeared
among the bushes,
in the irrigation ditches
where the earth deprived of hope
had drunk the water
they appeared in the deserts
like ghostly apparitions
in the stubborn expansion of the sands
where there still remained a moan
a breath of life…
the bodies, each one of them, impoverished,
with arms cut off, faces carved up
and still, always, the mothers,
sisters. cousins, the women of the country,
searching for that body that was no longer a body,
only debris and desolation.
time suspended in horror
when they discovered these bodies
the women repeated rigorously
the dignified ritual of death
that was the ritual of farewell,
and sometimes, in the middle of the desert,
of the irrigation ditches,
of a country closed forever by fear
they brought flowers
that also died at the moment of farewell,
but they were fragile flowers
claiming the moment of beauty,
the moment of life before the farewell