Yemen Genocide
The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks, “Where are you going?
No one is after you.” Jesus keeps on,
saying nothing, across two more fields, “Are you
the one who says words over a dead person,
so that he wakes up?” I am. “Did you not make
the clay birds fly?” Yes. “Who then
could possibly make you run like this?”
Jesus slows his pace.
I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence, it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth
and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing
happens. They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow. Other diseases are ways
for mercy to enter, but this non-responding
breeds violence and coldness towards God.
I am fleeing from that.
As little by little air steals water, so praise
dries up and evaporates with foolish people
who refuse to change. Like cold stone you it on
a cynic steals body heat. He doesn’t feel the sun.
(Jesus was not actually running away from people.
He was teaching in new way)
~ Rumi
Coleman Barks translation
L'amore e forte come la morte 