By Jena Woodhouse
How to confront the harshest muse,
the one whose masks are myriad,
who ultimately, when exposed,
will have no eyes, no face?
How to confront the nemesis
who enters unidentified,
yet knows the time and place,
employing agents, often uniformed?
The elements that nourish life
can just as soon extinguish it;
human hands, designed to make,
as instruments of will can kill.
And so the child is slain at play,
the helpless are defiled and maimed;
the soldier steels his hands and mind
to do the work of hate.
When the brain and soft tissue
are gone, the bones still testify:
the bones tell all
they know, they cannot lie—
for Clea Koff, forensic
anthropologist (Rwanda, Bosnia)
and author of The Bone Woman
