“torn”

how can you even begin to understand
when all you ever saw was a callous-hearted photograph
of a savagely soul-emptied land
or grasp the devoted dedicated commitment of its people
to their justly attained long-labored traditions and customs
cradled within the tenderly nurtured gentle realm
of their age-old civilization?

how can you even begin to conceive
where these precious fellow-souls
gather the countless pieces of their insides
after witnessing the slaughter of their babies
or what happens to that infant-innocence
if it survives the annihilation of its elderly
long enough to avow that it will further survive?

why don’t you look around
can you really not see
the multitudes of suffering abound?

torn inside and out
you still just go about . . .

“Business as usual” rules, you say?
better yet, the passé overrules
any likely change in our busy-ness
and stays put on its mighty swing set
to carefreely sway its mundane existence away
from the highest high of a ceiling
to the deepest hole in the ground

© hülya n. yılmaz, June 31, 2018

This poem was my contribution to Palestine. A Conscious Poetic Offering, an anthology of global endeavors, compiled by Gail Weston Shazor, the Director of Anthologies at Inner Child Press International, soon to be published by Inner Child Press International. Nizar Sartawi, the Director of International Relations at Inner Child Press International -educator, poet, literary translator shown in the picture, has kindly translated the poems I have read on various occasions in or near Amman, Jordan into Arabic. My special thanks go in abundance to all these much-cherished individuals.

[Photo Credit: William S. Peters Sr.]