(In memory of the 215 Indigenous children who died in Kamloops, B.C. and all the others betrayed by Canada’s abhorrent residential school system)
to look directly would shock us
with our own brutality, so we
avert our gaze, concoct fake histories,
dull our collective conscience
while archeologists reverently unearth
mummies and gold relics from ancient
tombs in Egypt, we keep the remains
of recent atrocities well buried, graves
unmarked, facts hidden, but for children
missing, families waiting…
until radar’s x-ray vision bores through
layers of denial to truth that screams
from small bones, in earth still sodden
from generations of grieving
tainted churches, schools, governments,
complicit nuns, priests, policemen, politicians,
bureaucrats, teachers, cooks, cleaners, gravediggers…
decades of silent witnesses
enabling the ‘unspeakable’
for what righteous purpose?
to civilize the heathens?
to educate the conquered?
to honour God?
how clever the devil in us
-so many disguises
Teri Coburn
Prince Edward County, ON
2021