It is because I recognize the brutality with which my own multi-branched ancestors have been treated that I can identify the despicable, lawless, cruel, and sadistic behavior that has characterized Israel’s attempts to erase a people, the Palestinians, from their own land.
~ Alice Walker
In the beginning of the last autumn
i brought from a thousand black eyes
the prize of war, that is mercy
there is no lesson here, only
an alluring figure, death and migration
I watched the shelters get bombed
And I thought I’m too old a sculptor
to know how to sculpt dead
corpses of children, to see
how they lay motionless in
bright pools of blood
how can there be cease-fires
when civilians must beg for peace
while western masters give them arms
in the beginning of the end of frozen summer
from every woman I borrowed
a supple curve, not for pregnant wishes
but for tears of the world
i created you from the marble of my poem
but I could not contain your wasted lives
so long as men think they are superior
to other men, they will fight to the death
snubbing their own God with their cruelty
beware! The wrath of the earth
will not tolerate this forever, maybe for
a few more decades, but judgement
will it be allowed to echo in your quietness?
You who have taken the bodies
You who have committed the war-crimes
You whose mouth is cold with death?