Chris Brandt

  FOR HENRY KISSINGER

  Is it too late to curse you, Henry?
  Is it time to have the years obscure your crimes?
 
  Time to close that chapter,
  let bygones be gone, give it a rest, let it be?

  No.
  It is not too late, Henry.

  And thus begins our curse:
  Be it never too late,

  be the voices you hear in your dotage
  your victims’ shouting Assassin! Thief!

  Because you sat well-tailored in handsome offices
  and sent others out to prove your power,

  because you wrote, "With proper tactics
  nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears",

  because you found white phosphorous a useful tool
  and napalm a tolerable arm of diplomacy,

  and agent orange necessary
  to policy, and tiger cages,

  because you didn’t understand why we should allow a country to go
  communist on account of its own people’s ignorance,

  because you enjoyed the company of Pinochet
  Marcos, Duvalier, Stroessner Somoza, the Shah,

  because you regretted Laos and Cambodia—
  "We should have found some other way of doing it",
 
  because you killed Allende and shattered Neruda's heart
  as surely as if you had held the gun yourself,
 
  because you accepted the Nobel Peace Prize,
  because in the mirror you see a god — Hermes, Loki,

  because you have a mind for deciding life and death,
  and it’s pure injustice of history that you're not still doing it—

  may the insects refuse to touch you, may the worms spit you back,
  may you never know decay’s comfort and rest.

  Let the voices follow you always.
  Let the burning children run toward you forever

  clasping you in their flaming arms.
  Let your eternal waiting room be

  the stadium in Santiago, filled with silent prisoners filing 
  past. Each one stops to look at you, 

  and you, with all the time in the world
  cannot look away.

  None mentions bruises, burns,
  missing fingernails, teeth, faces,

  each only recites a name — 
  Elena, Nguyen, Christofis, Bobby Jene, Laureano,

  and one of them hands you a snapshot of his daughters,
  another his unused high school registration card,

  a third the unfinished history of her family,
  a fourth holds out a stuffed penguin, won

  at a carnival moments before his arrest,
  the next carries nothing, having no hands,

  gives you only her look, and whispers 
  a poem, a hymn to the wind.

  The line of the disappeared goes on and on
  and you will stand rooted,

  seeing them at last. And always,
  always will you hear the songs of love

  Victor Jara continues to sing, 
  even without

  his tongue.

  Poem posted in this space, July 7, 2009

  To contact Chris Brandt send an email to chribrndt@aol.com