VIGIL

A watch-tower. No sounds elsewhere. No such, sounds outside. Pin drops to darkness or silence--untellable.

A mangrove forest, in the making as yet. Channels of water shivering through its body, inching towards the sea, that is (can only be) distant & dark in this blankness. Not much sound elsewhere.

Here arrives a couple of eyes, with the intent of seeing, sorry, watching. Is it not obvious? The watch-tower is for watching, pricking on!

No such man to be watched anywhere. Neither women. Only putrid sounds bubbling in what he (not us) would like to call his head! He calls out. His eyes. His mouth. Sounding out. Sea-waves--the only responses!

Then the tree-heads start nodding in obedience. Each tree vomits out a soldier under its shadow...Now a whole grove of soldiers, in the offing. Getting set, wounding the silence, which can also be darkness, by the way. Now the secret channels resemble trenches.

Now the WAR--the event, the spectacle, breaking the solemnity, that could have been allowed to be silence before.
A couple of eyes wink now--once. Then again. One by one. Together again. The battle-field now looks completed. It is time for the eyes to burn out, be finished. All this, as a resistance to the walls. Every man has become a watch-tower. Soldiers start vanishing, first one by one, then all together. Foredoomed.