by Marguerite Bouvard
A spider is working diligently before me
this Sunday morning. Long silken threads stretch
from its mouth, waving in each gust of air.
It’s like the game of hide and seek where
only a burst of unexpected light reveals the intricate,
ever changing pattern. It’s skill is in
its invisibility so that we can walk
through our morning without seeing
its handwork as we turn our attention
to the World Cup soccer match. Meanwhile
Iman Abou Omar is snatched from the sidewalk
as he walks home from his mosque in Milan,
vanished in the web that stretches
from Cairo to Amman, to Timisoara, Kabul,
Islamabad and Guantanamo. No one ever
sees this network of secret renditions
and detentions, an underworld
that pulses beneath our secured houses:
thousands hooded, naked and hurled outside of time.
I remember meeting a young German in the early 70s
when the history books were still cleansed.
I asked him about Auschwitz, Buchenwald,
and Dora Nordhausen. He looked at me
bewildered, answering What Camps?
Marguerite Bouvard is the author of five books and three chapbooks of poetry and several books on human rights and one on grieving. She is a resident Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women's Studies' Research Center.
