Poetry

Black Boxes

And now your name is on every list

With people who might have enjoyed jazz, buckwheat, Spanish wine.

A charred phone, still alive with an error message

Is kicked by a forensic, who bags the evidence.

Headlines, flags , flowers, fill out the vacant seats.

Black ribbons freeze on people’s public face.

Silence swells from minutes into hours, into the buzz

Of a radio: Chopin’s nocturne mangled by the crackle,

A church hymn sung on a false note,

A whispered interpretation of events,

A choked prayer.

They’ll bring out the big guns of nation, martyrdom,

Sainthood, and sacrifice, and piety.  Other accidents

Will slip through, unacknowledged – pencil strokes on birch bark.

They’ll agonise over the order of plaques (alphabetical, or by merit?)

And the height of memorial statues. 

In the annals of cruelty, Aprils have kept

A certain reputation, yours – another tree

In the forest of deaths and wars and banal genocide.

(in the memory of the victims of the 10 April plane crash near Smolensk, Russia)

Maria Kardel