A Scraping of Shovels
Wind blows ashes all around,
as men toil – bent over at an arduous task.
In the place where a scraping of shovels incises the coming night,
their blades incise cold and black encrusted ground.
Attached to the shovels' handles
are arms which are skeletons,
and the arms belong to bruised, decrepit bodies.
Hacking and wheezing, the men continue smiting the earth -
plunging the shovels down, lifting them up with dirt,
and tossing the dirt to the side.
Plunging, lifting, tossing dirt – again and again and again.
The men are so frail they barely can continue,
but with the armed guards watching on,
they dare not falter and come to a stop.
Coming from the gloom are shrieks,
and then comes that all too-familar stench
after the shrieks have died out.
It permeates the air and seeps into their nostrils,
and still they toil at the trench.
They struggle on beneath a sky which for a long time now
has withheld from them its light,
and the light of hope is but a dream
that perhaps crosses their minds from time to time.
Perhaps in their dreams at night
as they lie on crude and uncomfortable "beds,"
they imagine they are digging tunnels -
tunnels which will lead them away from all this misery,
but their misery is a nightmare from which they can’t awake.
What horror in their knowing that their own bodies
might one day soon be lying too
in these graves they dig.
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