I Found Them in a Dream

(by Mieczyslaw Jastrun. Translated Dzvinia Orlowsky & Jeff Friedman)

I found them in dream,
but didn’t know it,
because they had changed.

The dream gave me
a sixth sense, new eyes
to see the massacre,

the operative logic—
how they squeezed
through narrow streets,
arms bloody.

The bullfinch descended
in its black and white feathers
witness to the crimes—

red plots,
a burned clearing.