Black Waters Poem by Vinita Agrawal

Black Waters

The revolutionaries were exiled for life
in a puce colored colonial prison
on an archipelago, untraceable on the maps.
Every breath harrowed, black-hued or not at all.

Iron contraptions for the neck and ankles
Coarse jute tunics for torsos. Rations - fit for sparrows
Flogging that made buttocks bleed.
Permitted to urinate just once a day.

Tortured and abused on hand-driven oil mills
extracting 10 lbs of coconut oil, like an indemnity.
Their nerveless hands slack, their countenance fractured.
Up in the heavens, stars glistened moistly for these rebels.

No one ever escaped these Black Waters, the excruciating seas, the agonizing oceans.
Only their screams made it out. Raided the air,
cracked the winds and lay scattered like dead leaves on the islands...
like fragments of a tormented mind.

To think that political dissent could be like this.
Indictment could be like this.
That a man might lose all dignity, die of hunger, lose his mind,
be crucified at the edifice of endurance but gain a country, nevertheless.
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