For Amnesty

by John Stocks

They made love in the woodland after rain
Spring in the grasses, Thyme’s fragrance in the air
Both embarrassed at first a pulsing blush
Her skin porous bewitched by the moment
Glutting wildly on this feast of passion
That seemed both infinite and fleeting
When she saw his limp body swing again.

In the second before the breaking storm
An ominous lull and the creaking sky
Tightened; they would hunt them down like dogs.
Named as a traitor, his final hours
Would be free not lost in sullen defiance
She would remember this gentle release
Though wishing that she had never been born.

He was not afraid of dying
But of his essays being disembowelled
His ideas trussed and flayed then
Buried in some clammy pit of irony
She would morn his voice, words yet unspoken
It was erasure that he feared the most
And all the hopeless trysts of martyrdom.

And as I write the mad blood still burns
In Afghanistan and the Lebanon
Tearing flesh from flesh, corrupt ideologies
Crude perversions disguised as faith.
Truth withers like a spring flower under frost
A bitter pill, desolation
In thoughts and dreams alone;
Immortality.