I   A Calm Overview
 
What separates us from the Romans calling 
for the Christian to be torn apart by beasts?
What separates us from the Aztec priests
slicing out the heart of a captive tribesman?
 
A Humanist revolution and an Enlightenment
unconstrained by religion. And laws to promote
a human against king, tyrant, tribe, and mob.
And universities to promote reason and science.
 
 
Today the mob rules the universities. Tribalism
returns and blood-soaked flags are hoist
in our land while anti-American professors spew
calls for annihilation of those refusing to bow.  
 
 
II. Joyful Dancing, Joyful Living
 
A young woman laughs, picking up the beat,
Two sisters rush forward to greet their friend;
The three dance with grace, posing for pictures.
 
In the village, a mother smiles at her year-old child,
returns to preparing a meal, lifts the tomatoes
 to the sink, washing off the dust from her garden.
 
A young man, with tousled hair, leans over rocks
with which he starts to build a wall to hold the sheep,
fitting piece to piece without mortar, crafting beauty.
 
 
 
III.  What rough beast?  
 
The heart beats erratically in the man
whose eye is bored out. The terrorists
leave one eye, cackling at him, while
they dismember his child, rape his wife.
They believe in terror; they feel alive 
when maiming and killing. They behead
a child with a shovel. They kill the father
finally; a young terrorist begs to behead him.
 
 
IV Asylum U.
 
"From the river to the sea" chant the robotic
youth, eager to be seen carrying signs
against the Jews. This is bravery they think.
Of the holocaust they know nothing, The lemmings
follow their "cool" professor of Marxist bent.
In myth the rats drown together in the sea; here
the suicide is mental and may be permanent.
 
The campus rats love to move in hoards, escaping
arrest by numbers. They love to shout and scream
as if their madness was understandable. How little
they realize they are being used by the autocrats
of power, anarchists of force, those who will rule
the rats (or the Khmer Rouge), later, will imprison them,
or will place them in positions of self-mocking power.
 
 
V   From the tunnels and hiding places
 
If I do not look at them, I may be spared or die quickly.
If I do not look, do not feel, do not remember
If I do not recoil each time they stand over us,
I may be spared. Do I want to live, can I live
without remembering? We are underground.
We are buried alive with the demons who need
to be killed. If my death comes when they die
I will give my approval. If I do not look at them,
If I do not see, if I do not feel, I am dead while 
alive, no other way to survive this burial of hope.
They rape me in hate. They killed my family.
Why am I still alive? To give witness? When?
When will I see the light? When will I know what 
justice the world will give? When will I live again?
 
 
VI.  On our island, the concert, the artist and religious leaders
 
Mozart and Britten give us music
to imagine ordered sound over frenzy
and ancient fears. We sit in a church letting
the sounds solace our minds, still shocked.
"Dissonance," followed by "burlesque"
return us to the normal. Beethoven rounds out
the program "Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo."
On the wall a stylized Cross holds within
a Star of David. Unspoken is our unifying love
for one another-- Christian and Jew –we are
alike in holding love as our banner and guide,
rather than hate, renouncing force over the other.
Weeks later, an island artist who crafts tapestries 
 of women in gardens invites her rabbi and the
Island's church leaders to speak to our community.
Police guard us. All is calm in our civilized world.
 
 
 
Virginia Walker, copyright 2023