Graves Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

Near a small border town
where the fighting had been
most fierce and everything was blown
to smithereens in the senseless, obscene
war, they found, amongst rocks and stones,
the scattered mass graves that were filled
with the white-stick, brittle bones
and fragments of those who had been killed.

Dedicated, meticulous student volunteers
with trowel, brush and gentle puffs of compressed air
crouched down for hours and days to clear
away debris and sort bone fragments for skeletal repair.

Near the site families and loved-ones stood without
a murmur or a smile or tear
(the hopeful, sceptics, unbelievers and devout)
waiting as if their life’s purpose had brought them here.

If I ever lay amongst fragments of bone, strands of hair,
I’d want someone to keep digging till they found me there.