The First Circle

1. the flat end of sorrow here two crows fighting over New Year's Party leftovers. From my cell, I see a cold hard world. 2. So this is the abscess that hurts the nation— jails, torture, blood and hunger. One day it will burst; it must burst. 3. When I heard you were taken we speculated, those of us at large where you would be in what nightmare will you star? That night I heard the moans wondering whose child could now be lost in the cellars of oppression. Then you emerged, tall, and bloody-eyed. It was the first time I wept. 4. The long nights I dread most the voices from behind the bars the early glow of dawn before the guard's steps wake me up, the desire to leap and stretch and yawn in anticipation of another dark home-coming day only to find that I cannot. riding the car into town, hemmed in between them their guns poking me in the ribs, I never had known that my people wore such sad faces, so sad they were, on New Year's Eve, so very sad.