No speech, no word, no voice is heard

Yet their span extends through all the earth,

Their words to the utmost bounds of the world

Psalm 18

It must have been a misunderstanding,

the deliberate devastation of homes

the gaping wounds in a hospital wall

and a broken school room where children

were taught to trust.

It must have been a misunderstanding

the curt demand to convert or leave

to undertake a long trudge to the hills,

loss carried in a bag of clothes,

nothing else besides.

It must have been a misunderstanding

that caused a fireball to erupt above the clouds

of eastern Europe, scattering a million flakes

of twisted metal and possessions to the ground

below,  lost lives.

It must have been a misunderstanding

that in this year of memory,

memory fails and in the passage of night

storm-flash scars the tempest skies

of a darkened dawn

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