An Ending of Days

After JFE Celliers’s poem “That’s All”

The ash of Shoah mingles and settles
with the ash of Nakba
covering the Holy Land
choking the River of Jordan
obliterating the Golden Mosque and the Temple Wall
blocking sun and moon and stars.

The jealous sons
fight to a bitter ending of days,
clawing at hearts and eyes
impaling mothers and children
burning each other’s sacred texts
lighting the final fuse.

A fleck of ash upon the tongue –
body and blood –
a mosaic chip from the muezzin’s turquoise tower,
a splinter from the Arc of the Covenant,
the eternal silence of afterwards.
That’s all.

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Image: The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martins