Vengeance

While the world builds poems
of beauty without words
Humans build other things.
Israel, Palestine
Your storied histories
Stop here.
You will always be famous
to me, now, Not for wars
between nations,
Not for fierce love of home,
Not for the bravest of you
pushing through deep sand
with olive branches
but for this—
for raising those
Who murder teenage boys.
If I could ask you anything
I would ask, How
can your countries not
collapse in grief beneath this?
And you (perhaps) would answer
with a litany of the long, dark sins
of my country, which are many.
And while we shout our true and
Righteous accusations,
somewhere on this earth,
this earth that would build beauty,
mothers weep at children’s graves.