Slain And Unknown…

Slain and unknown. Neither gathered up by forgetfulness nor dispersed by memory…they're forgotten in winter grass on the road that runs between two long tales, one of heroics, the other of suffering. 'I'm the victim here.' 'No, only I am the victim.' No one says to a poet: 'One victim doesn't kill another. In the story there's a killer and a victim.' Once they were young, shaking snow from the sacred cypress of Christ and playing with small angels - sons who were of the same generation… slipping away from school to escape mathematics and the old hamasa poetry to play an innocent game of death with soldiers on the barricades. And they didn't say to the soldiers: 'Put away your guns and open the road so a butterfly might find its mother near morning, so we might fly with the butterfly out of our dreams, for dreams are narrow at our door.' They were young and at play, making up stories to tell a red rose still under snow, behind two long tales, of heroics and suffering, and escaping with small angels to a clear sky…