I Wish I Could Believe

I Wish I Could Believe


I wish I could believe,
that the dead speak,
first to each other,
and then balanced between
the here and the better beyond,
loitering for a while to look
at their stabbed and bloodied bodies.
To move forward through time
to that better place.
I wish I could believe
in the paper money
laid on the graves
once a year. And the cooked
chicken with its feet cut off
on the graves before sunrise
when the dead have to go home
above the tropical trees
away from our arriving light
outside the village
in the mountains of Batu.
I wish I could believe
the way the youngest daughter
of the Atmajya family did
when she stood next to me
in front of the restaurant
looking at the bull made out
of four boys, a hand-made head
and a cloth over them. I asked,
what does this mean?
And she said, one by one
the boys will become delirious
and fall on the street.
The old men will rush up......

Linda Gregg

from "All of it Singing".