Archipelago
“To do evil a human being must first believe that what he is doing is good.”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Torture is a word
with more than four letters
but of course there are worse, words
like earlobe or gulag or Bagram
Air Base, places you hoped your
concealment might keep you from seeing.
*
It has been more than ten years
since Aleksandr returned to the taiga,
forty-some seasons since
he left us for dusk and the world
is the same now but different,
the appeals have grown louder.
The courts have drawn down
their heavyweight robes and butterflies
are trapped in their vestments.
The bailiff keeps checking his watch.
Still the old man sits
in the back of the room
and stares stalwartly on,
beard spilling from his eyes
like silver tailings from a mine,
he is quiet, there is too much to say
and he’s already said it, bellowed from
the hemlocks and his solitary cells
against the fear and the hate
for the hope and the love
without raising his voice,
without raising his hand.
*
Through ribboning birch
the snow hums down like an iron
branding on skin. A voice rings out
and then fades, swallowed by
a silence that spreads like an inkblot.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook True If Not Destroyed by James Gage (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/true-if-not-destroyed-by-james-gage/
….
Jamie Gage is an anti-war poet and songwriter whose work has been published in dozens of periodicals and literary journals including Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Wordrunner, Sand Hills, Out of Line, Mountain Gazette, Oyster River Pages, and others. His first book of poems True If Destroyed(2016) is available from Finishing Line Press, and his debut EP of original music, Earth Turns (2017) is available at Thunder Ridge Records, iTunes & other streaming channels.
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