Poems of Peace: Khayelihle Benghu, "A Crown Jewel of Sympodial Palace"

A Crown Jewel of Sympodial Palace

Sympodial, a garden down South,

cradled in a plain walled by hills,

at the heart of ruins and wretched silence.

Storms rage fiercer here than any place else.

But Sympodial stood in the eye of the tornado.

Lightning of airstrikes tore the sky,

walls crumbled as streets swallowed sound.

Where were the children? The elders?

Birds, livestock and those left behind,

the ones who could not flee.

Yet among the fallen, vines took roots

Their blood watered the palace,

where now the garden grows,

bodies of the ageless and nameless

woven into the soil like a vast blanket.

Some lost to airstrikes,

some to machine fire,

others to hunger’s slow execution.

A war crime, when the heart turns to stone.

Hush, Begonias. Tulips, Asters, Salvias and you Daffodils.

Be sated now, fed by bloods of the innocents,

Woven in unison with them for eternity.

Though, the sun is warm now,

And the wind hums a new song, a song of peace,

I still see their faces in my dreams, no longer in pain.

I whisper their names.

 

Jack, now a petunia.

Ruth, an orchid.

Little Joe transformed into Bluestar.

In this symposium of beauty,

pink, blue, purple adorn a palace

where royalty sleeps.

At dawn, when fragrance drapes the air,

mingling with morning dew like incense

before sacrament,

I bow my head, recalling the price paid here.

In prayer, I murmur their names.

God, merciful and majestic,

forget them not.

Grant them peace, pure and perpetual,

like the sun in summer’s late afternoon,

warm upon the soul.