At the checkpoint

for Ita Ford and Maura Clarke

We stand by your graves, dear sisters,
while a soldier checks our papers
and a policeman circles our truck
thumb on the safety of his M-16.
The girls riding with us
squat on gunny sacks of potatoes
and sing of the blue sky
the ‘sombrero azul Salvadoreno’
blue, like the shirts of the police,
blue, like the little village of tombs and crosses
where the army blocks the road
leading out of Chalatenango.

Our blue sky
was black night for you, dear sisters,
at the checkpoint
where you stood before other soldiers.
The stars, like grace or truth
or life itself
blazed overhead
as the light left your eyes
and you were flung
into the pit.

Beloved sisters, dead these ten years
the blue of your eyes
bright as tears at a wake
or a wedding
are the sheltering sky
the ‘sombrero azul’
stretched over us this morning.

- Charles Henri Rohrbacher      

                                Chalatenango, El Salvador
August 1990