Dissident poet James Matthews wrote this untitled poem as a tribute to Ahmed Timol, days after Timol’s murder. “At the time, the system was hounding me, and would not have tolerated my publishing a poem making direct reference to Timol. I thought that most intelligent people would recognise what it was about,” Matthews recalls.
draw a picture of a man
testing his weight
against air
making an abstract pattern
on the ground
let that picture settle
on the canvas
of the mind
let broken bones
and pus be mixed
the color of sunset
as screams riotously
register the effect
of a picture drawn
