Collection 11: Peace

Remembrance, Red Army Choir, Hand Crafted

Remembrance

So from your high cross did you see afar

in the armour, swords, the boots and horses,

the tramp of armies off to another war

the flags of battles and the hills of corpses?

So did you hear among our taunts and sneers

The echoing centuries of rage and hate?

the weeping lovers and the mothers' fears,

The curses hurled, the ever hardened heart?

And when they gave you bitter vinegar

could you taste upon parched lips the sting

of pain? the mad, the violated, those who  bear

sorrows drowned by the victors' idiot song?

Finally, when they bashed an iron nail 

into each hand, and in your side a spear

aimed for your life, could your heart still feel

Compassion for the ones who slew you there?

An athlete’s sweat, a mother’s pain, are wounds

Of love: nothing lives without a sacrifice.

Not the bite of nails, it is love that binds

Your broken body to this killing place.

Red Army Choir

This is not a war

Rumbled a tank as it crushed a car

With dad inside.

This is not a war

Howled the missiles as they homed in

On a maternity ward.

This is not a war

Whistled the torturer

As he inserted his probe.

This is not a war

Chanted the bullets as they hunted

Children through a playground.

This is not a war

Bellowed the bombs as they blasted

A theatre with a full house.

Blood oozed red under rubble.

The audience did not applaud.

Hand Crafted

Suppose you took a rest from making tables,

apprentice maker, as earlier from worlds;

and in that little Sabbath you took wood,

whose seed you coded at the roots of time,

You parted its smooth grain as once you parted

firmaments, yielding to your shaping blade,

forming a dove, your fellow before aeons…

Suppose you show it to your patient father.

It is admired and stroked and put somewhere.

Years pass. The family move away. The shop

decays and falls. The dove is lost in rubble.

States come and go, make love and war, till now

Palestinian and Israeli face each other…

Suppose a Hebrew shell or Arab rocket blasts

the old foundations, scattering their stones…

Suppose a child slides a hand into a gap...

Suppose she feels smooth beech wood, touches wings...