Here is something I wrote in college – forty-some years ago – and recently translated. It was my contribution to “Watching a movie – and discussing what we ‘got’ from it” . The war between Israel and Arabia. (Of course, this paper – as many of my papers – was “un-gradable”) … I never was a scholar.
I was selected to read it at “Peace Essays and Poetry, United Nations Peace Week,” at the Ojai Art Center on September 17, 2016.
Why? 1969
One cries over ones – due to war – dead husband
One mourns ones children’s frightened war eyes
Who cries for mankind?
Who cries for its cruel and evil ways – for its guilt?
If one human shows evil towards one human
We hate the first and protect the second
We take a position- we make a judgment
Humans protect humans
Against humans
Protection of one self against oneself
You are talking about a fraction of the entirety
As was it the whole
As if it had independence, as if it had importance, as if it had value – alone.
You demand that we take sides
You are mistaken
There is more
I cry over Mankind
Over you and over me
We are so terribly divided
So unbearably lonesome
Because the whole constantly divides itself – in front of our very eyes.
Zitta – originally written in 1969