Endless Nights of Rain

Did you have relatives

among the dead? the man

in the black felt hat is asked.

His dark poncho hanging like a shroud

over his clasped hands, he stands

in the little cemetery

on the edge of the village of San Mateo Ixtatan.

Around him the green walls

of the mountains and the conspiring shadows

that circle his world like bad weather

won't let him answer.

On the other side of his gaze

under his hat the leaves

are bloated with rain and he

is a man waking again

to the sound of gun fire

and the cries of his neighbors.

Relatives among the dead?

He does not answer. He no longer

trusts the simple truth.

It is 65 kilometers to Huehuetenango.

Where he stands it is 36 lives

away from the first of June

and all the living and the dead

are relatives where he stands.

Rain drips from his black hat

and a small shadow covers his eyes

where a whole country is hiding.

*

No one seems to know

who they were: the army

of the rich, the army of the poor,

the army of the rich

dressed in the clothes of the army of the poor.

No one knows whose souls

are tangled in the trees and vines

in the darkness of the mountains

outside the towns

or why the soldiers came

to kick in the doors of the sleepers

and gather the players and deal the hands

in the game called endless nights

of rain. For blood or money,

no one's sure. But the soldiers,

trained in forgetfulness, must have agreed

that their mothers were whores

that their own bodies were weapons

with which to stab out the lights.

And it goes on every night,

the rain and the killing

in some foreign country of the heart.