Rohingya Boy (Kutupalong)
Death speaks one fact: The verb that was this child
is dead and lies beneath his father’s tarp
in the language of rain at night. It’s only been a while.
His eyes have lost their light, his body chilled
by the blossoming tumor of his death. Time warped
when absence filled and spoke his final fact—then stilled
his breath (all quiet where he lies, and killed
by endless miles, a summer’s walk). He marched
and spent the moon’s dark silver coin, and smiled
as laughter held his paper kite that filled
and flew his temporary sky. How strange—such art
could not forbid death whispering your name, my child.
Who found your fallen kite the falling wind allowed?
And why does your father weep, when rain will take that part?
Because he knows that night will fall forever now,
and the rain’s immense calligraphy will mock and write
your trivial name in death’s dark file—this flightless tarp
your taunt. Some other boy will mend your kite (and smile),
then watch as your dark flower blooms into the night,
while rain and tears are flood to your father’s heart,
your name a wound, a noun—that was, this morning, child.
Your foreign home (how strange) was a mile beyond that hill.
Marc Wiegand has participated at a number of academies, among these the University
of Texas at Austin, and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, and
has been an Affiliate Fellow in visual arts at The Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria,
Italy. His poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Penwood
Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, and, soon, The Journal of
Undiscovered Poets and The Madrigal Press. He is an international lawyer, writer and
exhibiting visual artist who lives and works in the Texas Hill Country.
www.artmarco.net/works