… for you know as well as I do that under certain circumstances, at a certain temperature, metaphorically speaking, words lose their substance, their content, their meaning, they simply deliquesce, so that in this vaporous state deeds alone, naked deeds, show any tendency to solidity, it is deeds alone that we can take in our hands, so to speak, and examine like a mute lump of mineral, like a crystal. -Imre Kertész (Nobel for literature, Auschwitz survivor)
Let Israel, let America, let us all,
take this naked deed in hand,
turn it this way and that, hold it to the light,
let its hard crystalline presence pierce
the darkest of hearts.
Let it mute the megaphone mouths,
clear out the senate effluent,
the podium sludge that hourly pours
into living-rooms.
Let the vaporous words of “leaders”—
their toxins so common we’ve turned immune—
finally flame out and awaken in us,
a re-spiriting of justice and right-ness.
Let the meaningless epistles of embassies,
and the murderous euphemisms of Commanders
-in-Chief, choke in their throats,
at the wordless act of Aaron Bushnell.
And may the power of his deed
re-form, re-true our tongue,
speak its roar of enough!
Oh, Stephen, You break my heart open daily (thanks be!)
May you break open our will to “speak its roar of ENOUGH!”
Bringing it home where it belongs: MY will….
Thank you
Betsy-Mag
Thank you for this, Elizabeth. These kinds of posts are difficult and I do not write them without diligent thought and care, not because I usually loose subscribers with posts like these, but because I’m also compelled to write about matters of justice and truth, not that I have a complete grasp, but that there has to at least be a conversation, a recognition that things are not right. So thank you again.
Yes. Yes. Thank you, Stephen, for naming ‘those things that are not right’, and for ‘speaking its roar of enough’. I’m grateful for your voice.
Thank you, Claire. That means a lot.
Gwynn Dyer wrote a few months ago that Netanyahu and Hamas need each other to justify themselves….
With such tragic results.