for Hedy Epstein

[Kailashana]

The barbed wire of words
cuts deep into the flesh;
ask any Jew
her bloodline in the covenant
of history,
broken and betrayed
spat upon, and gassed
to death in the name
of the iron cross of hate.

But dreams don't die
do they, in the resurrection
of the light
and the light is shining from
her face,
the truth is spilling from her words
and truth can not be silenced
nor persuaded to live within its unholy fear
to perpetuate the ghetto, the bantustan
the oppression and the occupation
of any land.

I hugged all five feet of you, and looked
into your eyes and you looked into mine--
can we do any less in the march of valor
against all odds? (We can do no less
with our backs against the wall and we
are silenced into history with the truth
that was never told.)

One story of prejudice, hate and marginalization
is every story of recognition. The landscapes
and the costumes of its time change
into the skin we can never take off, not even
in the computer's animation.

We are Jews. We are Palestinians. We are
blacks in Capetown and Ohio, in the Congo,
we are Hutu and Tutsi, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian,
Russian and German and Chinese and Tibetan
Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan and Iranian, Algerian and Vietnamese,
we are the world's silence and we fancy ourselves Americans
holding the lamp of perpetual light
we are passengers on flotillas of hope,
and the audacity of courage
we are rich and we poor, we are politicians
of lament, we are men
and we are women. We dream and love
and destroy in the name of golden idols and
false Gods of our naming.

We live and die on the same earth with this final truth:
the heaviness of existence we leave behind to our children's children.

It's their story now.

L'Chaim!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Three of us from Cleveland (Middle East Peace Forum) drove to Wooster to hear Hedi Epstein speak. The pastor, Andries Coetzee, was born in South Africa, much to be said about his background and involvement in peace issues and bringing truth into the open. What a delightful man! Hedy Epstein and Andries, what a night! (Even if it was blizzardy, though I think every heart in that room had already been thawed.)

http://www.westminsterpresbyterianwoost ... t-survivor

Youtube below is from 2010, Berkley. There will be a youtube on line from yesterday's event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95mitkbg9M

[Kailashana]

I don't think that 5th paragraph will ever be *right*. I needed to include some of the Arab Spring countries and Iran, so crucial in the next few months but where do I stop? The American and South American Indians? The war between the tribes that became Europe? The more pertinent question, will we ever grow up into full humanity?

~A