Butch Hands !!

[Ginger]

I was thinking about why hands are so iconic or resonant an image, and it made me remember this poem by Carolyn Forche from the early eighties. I hope it's okay to post it here.

(My food just came, I'm having lobster salad in Maine, on vaca!!)

Sincerely,
Scout



Because One Is Always Forgotten
by Carolyn Forche


IN MEMORIAM, JOSE R UDOLFO VIERA
1939-1981: EL SALVADOR

When Viera was Buried we knew it had come to an end,
his coffin rocking into the ground like a boat or a cradle.

I could take my heart, he said, and give it to a campesino
And he would cut it up and give it back:

You can't eat heart in those four dark
chambers where a man can be kept years.

A boy soldier in the bone-hot sun works his knife
to peel the face from a dead man

and hang it from the branch of a tree
flowering with such faces.

The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands.