They arrived to this land at the calling of birds. Polin, polin, rest here.
Here, enclosed beneath the trees,
row after row the headstones stand silent,
angled this way and that from roots below,
so overrun with moss and leaves,
it’s as if the tombs grow from the ground, undistinguishable from nature,
save for a collection of stones placed on top.
Grave-markers huddled together across
the same land where children hid during the day, protected from death
by the dead. Polin, a resting place, called
now by the caw of hooded crows,
the only rest given to nameless masses, the ones made to starve,
buried, unblessed, in a heap of bone.
Let us bless them now, the lost, the stolen,
the starved, the separated. Those
nameless who by a coarse rock alone
are buried in this place, returned at long
last to a place of rest.
