Transforming Bombs

Oh, my dear Tajikistan… They tore you to pieces.  They snatched your life and killed your children and broke your land.  They turned to dust a house once a home.  How my heart breaks for your people who have broken bodies.  You hid yourselves and starved yourselves, unable to move yourselves without bullets coming, killing you. 

Oh, Crowned Land… We did not yet know your pain, when we walked in your midst, when we sang your songs and spoke your tongue.  We did not understand the look in your eyes.  Even a smile doesn’t hide the memories we saw in their reflection.  But now we know a portion of your despair.  Forgive us for not understanding.

Oh, Hospitable Land… They built them and sold them; economy thrived in them.  Did you sweep the home and keep it tidy for such a visitor?  How does this guest take off shoes in welcome?  Such a thing was your only unwelcomed guest.  It came to mess your cleared walkways, swept floors, and empty spaces.  It came to dirty your whitewashed walls and uproot your gardens.  It came from the air, whistling.  You were hoping, crouched down crying.  It incinerated your homes.

Oh, dear friends… I came empty-handed… empty-hearted.  My joy was blocked by inability to sorrow.  How did I not notice your painful poetry?  I forsook the image so blatant and beautiful before me.  For this one unwelcomed guest came just like the ones before.  It tumbled through the sky, crafted in hatred and anger, wielding power to destroy all you had.  And yet, dud-like it arrived.  And there it still sits: Transformed…  Soil placed within and flowers pouring out.  You made beauty of pain.  Forgive me for not understanding.

Oh, world… Is this some game without cost?  Is all this violence necessary?  Necessity enslaves us and kills freedom.  Necessity dehumanizes us.  We craft our bombs and store them for protection.  We are afraid and so we hate.  But our hatred destroys ourselves.  Is not love a better protector and friendship a better defense?  Why must bombs fall, breaking homes, lives and lands?  Do not children die in their parent’s arms?  Let us be Transformed.  Let us turn our bombs into decorative gifts, a poetic semblance of peaceful tidings.  Let them become beautiful.  Let them become flowerpots.  …Tell me I am naïve and I’ll show you their eyes…

Oh, Suffering God… We await You to teach us to sorrow and to be comforted.  Help us to grieve this world’s losses and to comfort those losing.  Teach our tears to run freely, harmonized with others’.  Forgive us for being blind to pain.  Forgive us for shunning the broken and insulating ourselves with comforting lies.  Have mercy on our ignorance.  Teach us to be wounded together… and thus alive.  We await You, King of Love, to drive away our fear.

[“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear.  Let him not love the earth too deeply.  Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red and veld with fire.  Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley.  For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.” –Alan Paton, Cry The Beloved Country]