Belgrano

Can you hear the curses? I hear them still
dead in the air rolling on the grey high seas,
fluttering, stuttering, up in the cold stony clouds,
frozen like kites in the middle of nowhere.
I hear the silence too, of the boys, the young young boy's
pressed against the bulwarks and the dead eyed iron,
sense their gun metal faces hidden inside the masks
of home spun green wool - skittering eyes peeping
through knitted balaclavas worn as cold comforters
dripping in Atlantic spume.

I can hear the whispers, the trembling pampas whispers
of near men, close men, light shaven, cropped near-to skull men,
some with dark, bull herding eyes , hearts full of Spanish guitar
and pampas whistles and beside them the rich city blond men,
quiet and bookish, alone with their poets and pebble black rosaries
running like the southern tides  through their cold chapped fingers.
All hugger-mugger equaled by forced conscription, circling in silence
within their sea shrouded fears - crammed like live fish quivering in their ancient tin of old victories.

Yes I hear them still, calling out for a distant mother's arms, ripping  
loose their little boy screams that are clear as over head seagulls
yet eight thousand miles away. I can hear their raw primitive panic,
ancient as the whelps of beaten camp fire dogs echoing back
from the steely grey clouds; I see them tearing at the
sea born mist, slicing the strings of their pampas kite curses
with broken bones and shattered skulls, loosing curses that rise to run
above the waves to our shores carrying the lost, little boy simpers
of clamour and death that found  roost in our forgetful hearts.

Yes I still hear the screams, the sea drowned, salt soaked screams,
a cold southern ocean full of drowning young Argentine boy dreams
(pronounced men before their time), those fire soaked screams and I remember how we the civilized danced on their sad lonely deaths in our distant dry victory soaked streets of triumphant,disregard and screamed ;
"Gotcha".