By Omar Sabbagh
What’s so good about it? A man said.
The world we live in is steeped in the blood
of innocents, the frail mathematics
of force majeure, where might is right, grown rich
and richer with each rigged fight, the poor
and needy who live on the far side of the door
of life, doubling their hearts
beneath murder and the cruelest arts of war.
All the while, God was listening.
I was a parent once, and am one still.
And though I killed my child
it was love that drove him through that chill
then back to the halcyon light again.
I have known so well the ways of men:
they lie, they lie to stay the rounding evils
they have brought upon themselves.
But in the end, harrowing through hell
there is my joyous boy, my one true pride.
The man heard all this in a whisper
haunting his ears, ghosts, wraiths, specters,
and said: I’m not sure, looking about our world,
the harrowing you speak of will ever quite tell.
I look to Palestine, gutted and wrecked and sold, now
cold to the touch, for all the native sunlight there.
I watch the bombs that have no eyes, no tongues
for speech, even to defend themselves, to defend
the indefensible. I watch the booming rage of Israel,
the Zionists, the rabid spittle of all those criminals.
And this is just one simple way of showing
the redemption that all must feel as owing
happened, I think, in a different place. And you,
the All-Knowing, must know that too.
God closed His godly eyes
in a sudden sadness, nodding.
And God began to cry.
