Light Three Candles


Light three candles.
Light one for Nafthali.
Light one for Gilad.
Light one for Eyal.
Light three yarhzeit candles;
It was no crime to be innocent students.
Say kaddish and call for justice.
Light another candle for Mohammed;
It was no crime to be in the path of vengeance.
Say kaddish and call for justice.
Light four more candles for black girls in Birmingham
It was no crime to go to church.
Say kaddish and call for justice.
Light more candles for teenage girls in Pakistan;
It was no crime to go to school.
Say kaddish and call for justice.
 
Light another candle, and another, and another;
Light candles all over the world.
Light candles for the grief of silent chairs and empty beds..
Light candles in the homes of parents, of brothers, of sisters.
Light candles in the homes of aunts and uncles and cousins.
Light candles in the homes of friends and neighbors.
Light candles in the homes of strangers who just want it to stop.
Say kaddish and call for justice.
Light so many candles that they burn in every street in every town,
Burn through every day and through every night.
When there are enough candles then there will be justice.
The justice is named Peace. 
 



Vision of an Aegyptian Cobra
 
 
In dead silence,
With Isis standing on the prow,
The barque of Osiris sails into night.
 
Dimly revealed in luminescent flakes of vapour,
The great oars nor splash nor sound,
Dipping into darkness amid bodies drowned in sleep.
 
Calmly, with weightless quiet,
Past the hills of sand-swept Thebes,
Past the monuments of the pharaohs,
Beyond the currents of the river Nile,
Osiris sails into night.





The Elephants Graveyard


The old bull elephant,
Dying,
Trudged slowly,
Until, by instinct,
He had arrived at the entrance.
 
His wrinkled, baggy skin,
The deep grey worn away,
Burdened his flanks
As he entered the valley
Between the emerald mountains.
 
He stepped among the blanched bones of his ancestors,
Ponderously treading green velvet earth
Which contained treasured remains of the ancients.
Great white tusks,
Beyond the reach of the ivory hunters,
Laid priceless in rippling sable grass,
Scattered beyond the range of his dimming sight.
 
He sank to his knees beside a lulling cataract,
White spray and chalk-colored stones,
And surveyed the valley with its dried bones.
Silence was complete:
No chatter of monkeys,
No shrieks of jungle birds,
No grating drone of flying shiny metal.
He was the sole living creature in the wind-swept vale;
This strip of land the tribesmen had known of
But the new men will never find.
 
His eyes flickered.
Mastering the pain hammering from within,
This aged bull elephant lifted high his long graceful trunk
And roared a last, proud cry.
His eyes shut, he tumbled on his side,
And he lay still.
 
    
 
The Elephants Graveyard was published in di-verse-city Anthology 2013