the visitor

Once I got home last night, I still had Katie's nonfiction piece in my head. Eventually, this lead me to my bookcase where I pulled out Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us. Forché wrote this collection of poems after working in El Salvador where she witnessed many human rights violations and eventually the country's 1979 coup d'état. It's a beautiful and heartbreaking little book that explores some similar topics as Katie's piece. Katie, if you haven't already read it, I'm happy to loan you mine. (Interestingly, Forché is also from Detroit.) The last line of this poem seems to wander into a similar place as where Katie's piece also took me.

The Visitor

In Spanish he whispers there is no time left.
It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat,
the ache of some field song in Salvador.
The wind along the prison, cautious
as Francisco's hands on the inside, touching
the walls as he walks, it is his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country.

There is nothing one man will not do to another.