The child running into the golden seam of sunset, in play
of laughter and the sparkling seam of the sky tying day and night
into a tapestry of grandmothers and mothers watching through windows
to the sizzle of stoves, olive oil, garlic, za’atar of oregano, thyme, marjoram,
the savor of sustenance, of life—
To celebrate the right of parents walking in the market holding hands, bickering
over prices or which figs to buy, making love to the sound
of silver nighttime under the cover of nightjars’ whistle made of stars
and peace.
To be visited in their dreams only of the silence of their families sleeping messily
in their beds, visited by memories of day’s busyness of feet shuffling
from room to their neighbors’ to markets and schools, to universities of peace.
Who doesn’t want this?
Only men who are haunted in their sleep by their own bowels churning with blood,
waking up with scythes in their hands and turning away from wheat, terrorized
by burning and chaotic nightmares. Their eyes full of ripping the thread from that sky?
To extract the people from their beds, burn the fields into the ground with delight.
The Earth does not want this, nor the children holding colored shards of olive bottle glass
to the sunlight, marveling at the world broken into indigo and marigold, fractured
by rays of scarlet in the day’s heat, bringing it together as they leave it in the dust
to run one more time after a playmate before the day
settles into the amaranth of untroubled dreams, to bodies
breathing at ease in their bed, their arms wrapped lazily around their beloved,
singing the night into its daily rest.
The streets full of deep silence and drowsy lights,
no one’s darkest dreams wishing for the severed
head of their neighbor, the rape of daughters,
the shared livestream of celebrated death,
night and day of shattered glass.
