Pro Se

Each bit of ice is a lens
When the high clouds ring the moon.

What the man’s clothes have to say,
Man who was killed in a cave,

Trapped and blown to bits by men
Who fought him for the same land,

Who threw their bomb in the cave
To kill him and end his claim,

Whose bomb blew through the cave’s roof,
A small hole in the cave’s roof

Through which some sun could reach in
To stir the seeds of the fig

From his lunch, left in the pit
Of his guts on the cave’s floor,

From which a strange fig tree grew,
A kind not found in that land,

To poke its crown through the hole
And prompt some souls to crawl in

To see what could be down there
That would sprout this strange cave fig,

To find the clothes and some bones
Left of the man who was killed

Years and years and years long gone—
Is it that the truth will out?

Or is it that life will find
A way, or that what is is

Not what was meant, or that grief
Will wait a life and a day

To close like roots on a name?
Each bit of ice is a lens

When these high clouds ring the moon,
And we think on this day’s news.