
To the Killing Fields
by Lorraine Caputo
I.
How many of you on
this tour, with greying & white locks,
faced or lost
family, friends
in these killing fields?
II.
A large stone blocks our way
to the cemetery
No-one of these three dozen
wants to go
… If there is no way
then we shan’t
It doesn’t matter …
But a lone voice insists
his tour mates proclaim
… But we shan’t get off …
We ease our way
past the boulders
the road then clear
to those killing fields
Where one by one each descends
to say a prayer for
to read the commemorations to
those who died
at Pisagua
Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 100 journals in Canada, the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa; 11 chapbooks of poetry – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and the upcoming Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2016); and 17 anthologies. She has also authored a dozen travel guidebooks. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem of the month. Caputo has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. For the past decade, she has been traveling through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.