ManicDDaily

The Magdalena

The Rio Magdalena in Colombia
washes up the no-named
dead,
washes their feet
on its strands, laps
eyelids that catch
the sky’s tears, unwinds
river weed.

Near villagers wear
funeral weeds
for the no-named
and as supplicants to a God
who might pick them too
from dark currents.

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I often call my poems drafts as I am unbelievably indecisive about editing.  Here’s a poem that was relatively simple last night when I wrote the first draft–then grew very long and explanatory–then got simple and even shorter again, thanks to the brutal eye of my husband (who is a far better editor than I–why I don’t always show him things.)  I was going to post both poems, as they really are quite different from each other, but decided not to press my luck.  (And I even edited again since posting–agh.)

The poem was written for Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads, to write a poem responding to the work of Claribel Allegria, a Central American poet.  It was also directly inspired by the work of a filmmaker and photographer, Juan Manuel Echavarria, who’s made a film called Requiem NN, and also put together an exhibition of photographs, about Puerto Berrio, a town on the banks of the Magdalena, where many unnamed bodies have washed up (during periods of drug war violence).  Various townspeople would safeguard the remains and sometimes even adopt the unnamed victims, entombing them in large walls of sarcophagi.  (Of course, many townspeople had also lost family members to the violence.)

The above video is the trailer of the film, but does not really describe the adoption of the dead so much as the video below, an interview with the director.