"East Timor Lament "

Craggy and forbidding

Rock faces climb out of sight

clung to by stubborn vines

parched meadows roll down

and up toward the clouds

searching more desperately each day

for the face of the mountain

named Mundo Perdido*

Below the land falls slowly toward Baucau

lethargic island pearl

and the Wetar straits

evaporating into midday below

hills are dotted

with moldy white vestiges

of an Iberian empire

that withered for four centuries

toothless and stubble faced

it clutched its farthest tropical outpost

in drooling dreamy oblivion

I rattle the glass doors

of the Escuela do Reino de Venilale

but they won't let me in

worn schoolbenches of another age
sit idle

while a new generation plays tentatively

under a solitary tree

in the dusty courtyard

I see only the young

I see no one who remembers

Off the rocky roadside

I peer into crevices

for traces of bones

of tens of thousands

become rock and soil

and sediment

foundation of an unborn nation

softly voices wail on the wind

for someone to honor them

to weep for them

late in the solitude of night

but they cannot be mourned

without proof they existed

the mountain has absorbed the blood

the horror and the tender memory

of mothers and fathers

yielding only piercing silence

and the voices of aimless youth

brash in their defiance

angry at a future

dangled before them

and at once witheld

by grinning Jakarta generals

the cool breeze whispers:

Mundo Perdido

--AMVB