Shiva’s Frenzied Dance: Bones Breathe in the Winter

In 1937, every inch of land bore the mark of Shiva

I

Near the Yangtze’s banks, deposits of skulls

beneath Nanjing’s winter soil.

Shiva’s dance starts in a frenzy,

whirling through 1937.

Every name is struck by his storm,

falling into the cycle of rebirth.

You see them stacked like porcelain bowls,

hundreds deep in the earth.

II

You count skulls, one by one, each a corpse,

and the mottled, dusty remnants of clothes—

like a soldier counting bullets.

You touch these white centers, dried, bloodless,

but the cruel winter winds cannot tear down

those white flags with red circles, fluttering

against the wind.

A group of army-uniformed madmen, like crows,

feast on flesh rotting on the ground,

laughing, competing to gather more fruits of sin.

This is December 1937, an ordinary day.

Your heart drowns in pools of blood

no Yangtze waters dilute,

no dark pits contain.

III

Soft soil, scattered with bones,

submerges beneath time.

You cannot linger, cannot watch:

Cold Type-97 grenades nest like peeled bananas,

tested upon victims' bodies, marking time

with violent laughter.

Young girls elude those fresh tombs,

learn to disguise themselves as muddy-faced boys,

dodging Type-38 bayonets, hunting their wombs.

Elders wisely modify mazes in tunnels,

emerging like pangolins at secret intersections,

crafting telegrams into riddles.

The dance of bayonets never stops,

like an out-of-control engine,

searching for all heights, sizes, and shapes.

IV

Fingers broke on ground

like full stop, feeding Cerberus

pointing toward the underworld’s

all-encompassing landscape.

No need for a textbook to describe these scenes—

you feel the scarlet fading to brown fabric,

the body of their blood seeping into the earth.

The earth will bear the mark of Shiva’s dance,

a death dance of limbs and bodies,

assimilating darkness in the form of decapitation.

Here belongs the ocean of blood,

to the butchers’ world.

Here stands the sacrificial altar.

— Offerings — bones.

— Remains — river and field.

Dark thrones stand for the invader.

You cannot watch too long,

force yourself to turn away.

V

Though priests pray for sinners,

you cannot age with them.

Deep in your trembling heart,

you wish to cast them into a lake of fire,

before a flag of truce rises.

But you are powerless—

only clench fists in rage.

Here, you don’t need to open

the dark pages of the history books.

You only have to look

into the flank of the earth,

to discover how these soils

become a cutting board.

You press your hands into the dirt.

Feel the soil breathe their cries.

You hear the cries of the silence—the breath of bones.

VI

In the dark winter of 1937,

only the burst blood of the dead stays warm.

Only the Destroyer—Shiva,

neither laughing nor crying, with his footsteps

crushing every inch of this scorched land.

You ponder how war cruelly erases people,

how it adds names to gravestones and

how the living record their lingering embers.