Sitting deeply in grief,  
in deep grief and mourning  
morning and night.

The knights nowhere  
to be seen. Sight  
is a witness, complicit. 

From minarets and church pits,  
we illicit faith. The eve  
of Christ’s birth 

almost here. Hear the Earth  
as it receives the body’s  
soft and exposed tissues, the heart 

hard as a rock, the rock no longer 
figurative. We lost even  
the figures of our children. The outline 

of a body, jagged front line,  
bulldozed memory. Our eyes open  
to the mouth of a weapon. 

Someone, somewhere, is playing  
the violin in the background  
of violence.

Before all of this, we didn’t think    
too often of heaven. We wanted to fly  
through clouds, not above them.