The Old War

The Old War 
by Julia B Levine
			From the place where we are right
                                                           Flowers will never grow…Yehuda Amichai


When the old war explodes again,
a high-speed convoy climbs over the Judean Hills 
towards the disputed heavens, 
twenty-six children sleeping 
with their heads on their mothers’ laps, 
and thirteen of those mothers ride in you, thirteen in me, 
all of them staring blankly out the dusty windows, 
while the buses lift above the mountains 
with its ibex and oryx and a single wild iris 
in your origin myth, in mine, two bulbs 
wired underground and waiting for rain 
to detonate their beauty, rain that will run 
into the rivers of the one true God 
setting the other true God on fire, 
the waters divided and brimming 
with a St. Peters fish glinting in the talons 
of the sea hawk in you, the sea hawk in me, 
both ospreys killing and singing 
and flying over the temples 
where the zealots pray for the world 
to end in the name of the holy, 
their bitterness waking the twenty-six children 
who press their faces to the windows,
worried what they missed in sleep, 
while their mothers gather up the dropped books 
and game-boys, and because already 
the children have forgotten their dreams, 
you and I must carry those too— 
the operas of birdsong and blaring sirens, 
the soccer cleats and number 2 pencils,
jostling beside black hooded men 
shooting out the nursery doors—
but what can we do?
Tell me, I’ll tell you, 
the brutality that is your history 
and mine, can’t be undone. 
And yet, go on, ask, When, 
and in whose field, 
will the lamb in me, the lamb in you, 
lie quietly together in shadow, in sun?

Copyright 2023 by Julia B Levine