The women of Jerusalem cry out,
“Our brothers were slain in Bethlehem thirty years before!”
Is there no respite?
Spin the globe and the whirling winds shriek the same lament.
Women cradle their lifeless infants at their shrivelled breasts.
Women scrub their own blood from their ravaged skirts.
Women weep.
They cannot halt the spread of poison,
the seeping hatred that brutality seeds within their womb.
Is there no end to suffering,
self-inflicted by a twisted humanity?
What is there in manhood to revere
when it manifests itself in such calculated cruelty?
What is it in men
that so many only snatch a restless peace
on the back of subjugated women?
The women of Jerusalem look to Jesus for comfort.
They give him the last of their hope
as the starving might share their last sack of seed-corn.
He does not take it.
He cannot germinate their dream.
He can give no succour to their longing for liberation
for he, like them, like us,
is bound by human destiny.
But know this: if we weep for each other,
We weep for him,
Our wracked and tortured brother.
And if we weep for him,
the tears wrung from us
might one day run in such torrents
all human malice will be swept away.
Until that day,
all we can do is share with him
the impotence of caring.