Refugees/Chiapas

I cannot dispel these thoughts of you.
Across three thousand miles
you haunt me with cold hard facts.
You wait corralled high in the hills
of Chiapas, remembering.
Is anyone left in the village
to weave the shrouds?

I saw you in Huehuetenango
when you came down from the village
to market your cloth.
It was parrot-green, aqua, magenta, gold.
Is anyone left to learn from you
the art of the Mayan loom?

The wheel and the shuttle are still.
The brilliance that flowed like a song
from your highlands
has become a crimson stain
on the soul of the world.
Guatemala, mute with horror now,
survive to sing another day.

Stacie Smith-Rowe was an artist and poet and lived in Oregon with her husband and three sons when this poem appeared.