Only silence will describe such inhumanity.

Every day it seems, the evening news is a rerun of yesterday: 

the endless deaths of young and old, men and women, 

all who stand in the way of another’s search for power. 

In Ukraine families huddle in ruins that were once homes

where laughter and dreams flourished and family love prevailed.

Now the men are enlisted in a cruel war that seems to have no end.

They see things that none can repeat in words: mangled bodies,

children killed before their first steps, communities destroyed.

In the midst of their fear they dream of their families and pray

that somehow, someone will bring an end to this insanity.

In Gaza youthful conscripts follow without question orders

to kill without mercy until the last shred of support for an event

that mirrored what Palestinians have endured for a century is destroyed.

Their land was stolen, a village here, a garden there, a concrete wall

and lethal weapons beyond imagining, control the movement of a proud people.

The people of Gaza see things that cannot be repeated in human words.

Death is everywhere, its smell hangs on the air, it finds a home in every heart.

And who will tell these blood-stained stories of inhumanity and misplaced power

when tomorrow comes, the guns are silenced and politicians feign repentance?

The stories will be embedded in the lives of children scarred by these inhuman events.

Mothers and wives will relive the long days of worry and fear, hunger and despair.

Those who obeyed commands to kill will be scarred forever, haunted by their own deeds.

But those who saw the most, who though in life remain in death’s embrace,

will remain silent lest their very words betray the enormity of those dark times.

We recall our forebears, survivors of Paschendale and Gallipoli, Crete and Greece, 

those whose lives were damaged by what they saw and what they did.

They too remained silent lest their very words justify all that was done in those dark times.

They found no words adequate to describe what they saw, felt, feared and did.

Only their glazed eyes touched by tears remained as signs of inhumanity laid bare.

When you have faced the evil depths of inhumanity only silence can describe it all.

In their silence do they somehow share in the silence of a weeping God?