Bag of Bones

What good luck!

She has found his bones.

The skull is also in the bag

the bag in her hand

like all other bags

in all other trembling hands.

His bones, like thousands of bones

in the mass graveyard,

his skull, not like any other skull.

Two eyes or holes

with which he listened to music

that told his own story,

a nose

that never knew clean air,

a mouth, open like a chasm,

was not like that when he kissed her

there, quietly,

not in this place

noisy with skulls and bones and dust

dug up with questions:

What does it mean to die all this death

in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?

What does it mean to meet your loved ones now

with all of these hollow places?

To give back to your mother

on the occasion of death

a handful of bones

she had given to you

on the occasion of birth?

To depart without death or birth certificates

because the dictator does not give receipts

when he takes your life?

The dictator has a heart, too,

a balloon that never pops.

He has a skull, too, a huge one

not like any other skull.

It solved by itself a math problem

that multiplied the one death by millions

to equal homeland.

The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.

He has an audience, too,

an audience that claps

until the bones begin to rattle —

the bones in bags,

the full bag finally in her hand,

unlike her disappointed neighbor

who has not yet found her own.