Refaat and Ghassan, silenced,
left us with only letters,
echoes of verses and stanzas
and now Renee will not return
to teach her child sight words,
or scrawl a volta
but duende dictates
those who remain must listen to the wind.
It blows elegies in a shofar
for Dovid and Itzik,
Hannah and Isaac.
We won’t forget their messages,
though quills and capita were killed
for speaking truth.
Unvarnished honesty sheds splinters.
Let them intrude, irritate
invade the consciousness
of the numb and torpid.
If governments say
skeletons must fracture
let us dissolve this system
If this world must should perish,
prostrated from anthropoid heat,
Let masked oppressors calve into a thirsty sea.