it doesn’t matter
who attacked first or if the bombs came from Your side or Ours.
It only matters that infants and teenagers and old men lay dead
and mothers and brothers are left with
memories.
It only matters that shards cut into skin
and buildings fall down and records are destroyed.
It matters that in the history of human
aggression, the sickness of Cain and Abel
is getting worse, mechanical.
(The people who can do something about it may
choose to pause the fighting, but it is merely a pause
and the recklessness will return next week, next month.)
What matters is not who started but who stops for good,
once men and women choose to see that the
death of Your children
is no less important than the death of Our children.
