From One Mother to Another - A Poem

After I had read the writings and speeches of Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of English and a human rights activist, I felt inspired to write the following poem - from one mother to another living in the Middle East:


She speaks not of muted tongue,
Nurit Peled-Elhanan;
but in the tongue of many languages
and I hear her loud and clear; do you?
or is it Babel, all over again?
This time, she speaks to me
The mother, the widow, the sufferer;
In collective mourning for our lost humanity.
And I understand.
So why doesn't he or she over there?
The Megalomaniac who likes to tear my world apart.
The Megalomaniac who loves racism, fascism and death deemed appropriate
in a peculiar notion of what is right – a war on terror …?
A war on peace it seems to me; on motherhood;
on you and me and a child.
And as I quote Nurit Peled-Elhanan, when she writes
"Why does that streak of blood, rip the petal of your cheek?"
I strain to find the reason ...
... why?