Down there
sea was a sea you didn’t recognise
blindfolded, a whisper—
don’t forget who you are
on your way

down
lack of oxygen,
cells burst open,
blood-flow to lungs
stops

Sea horse — caballito de mar — will ride on your side
your tangled language parts reversing roles
let them know you hover
in stormy waters of the South Atlantic, a blue whale
a lost trawler ship
they were pushed down,
they were pushed down
officer Adolfo Scilingo danced in a trance
on those maddening flights

changing colour,
clicking heels
Sea Horse saw it.

In May, former Argentinian navy pilot Adolfo Scilingo was photographed by a Spanish news agency walking the streets of a small town north of Madrid, causing outrage among human rights organisations in Argentina. In 2007 Scilingo was sentenced by a Spanish court to 1,084 years for crimes of genocide during the dirty war in Argentina in the 1970s. Scilingo piloted the “death flights” transporting heavily sedated prisoners who were then thrown naked into the Atlantic. He had a hand in 30 such murders and bizarrely claimed that the crews played Brazilian dance music to their victims so that they could die happy. According to his testimony, 1,500-2,000 were “disappeared” this way. He was also found to have participated in 255 kidnappings. It's alleged that he’s been out of prison on licence 26 times already and is expected to be freed in 2019.

Leo Boix is an Argentinian poet and journalist resident in Britain.