Excerpts from “Five Sisters”

Over there, in that sleeping town, beyond those hills that lay down, five sisters hurried to the naked mountain. Over there, in that deserted land, where short and long valleys walk together hand in hand, where the plain has no grove and no green, where dirt routes don’t conclude, five sisters were taken. No one saved them. The high and low mounds, the scattered oaks, the rough and smooth rocks, the immense and little, the stones, all these did not save them. Over there, in that gray-blue distance, five sisters screamed. Over there, five sisters were left behind, five sisters were grabbed from the arms of their family to face the guns’ muzzles in a sunburnt town, in a far horizon, in a ragged mountain range. God witnessed this tragedy, the stunned moon witnessed it, the lithe xerophytes witnessed it, the salty warm dark soil witnessed it, the hot golden noon witnessed it, the ash houses, the dead bodies, the dusty air, the blood’s smell, and the sunbeams witnessed it. None dared prevent it. I did not: coward, feeble, poor sister. *