A Light Never Extinguished

by Robert Breen

In memoriam for Fadwa Suleiman

i
The civil war is generational.
Atrocities kick in an untouched spring
As if, a child’s prized soccer ball.
A sparrow hawk flew into danger her
Flame-heart was that of a heroine’s flight.
Daily rations a crumbled stone nest
Have to be enough to sustain her,
Constant struggle in dark solitude.
This barren war-torn land is a place of
Shifting windblown sand; blood flows
Through cedar-less streets of charred
Shell-cratered dreams. Enemies over
Her hills were friends not that long ago.
Her displaced beauty is a wounded spirit,
Always reaching,
Always on the move,
Always searching for a house of rest.

ii
This moment I am valiant, in my choice, for
I stop to attend to you, a soldier, as if we were
Heroes of Tasso’s Jerusalem,
Our shared gaze gives us our humanity,
My shirt torn to tie a knot, we share
A helmet for a cool drink to health.
I etch the time across your soft forehead.
I believe your tourniquet wound wills life.
Crusades could never be romantic.
No one here lives long in the open.
A boy’s will indoctrinated
Can greet you with a hair-trigger smile.
A stealth-silent drone patrols above,
The cold cloud cover of blue skies. This
Soulless industry chews a new day.

iii
On the other side of midnight, Merton said,
“We hit the cosmic lottery.”
Our moment forged eons ago when
Meteor arks crashed together for
A single purpose, creation; yet
Still we spill blood-love that flows from madness.
The plundered land remains holy.
True mindfulness providence delivers
a night’s sketch, throughout this stark universe.
Northern Star and Southern Cross stay fixed.
And showers seem to come to earth
When mackerel skies follow horse wisps.