My mother is over ninety,
diminishing day by day.
I care for her, and the nearer she drifts
toward the final point,
the closer she seems to return
to the beginning point.
I hold in my arms an absolute child.
Regardless of her age,
she grows more adorable in my eyes.
She is my baby.
I see how profound—how satisfying—it is
to care for a fragile, precious being,
whether a child or an old soul.
I have learned that vulnerability
is the line that cleaves the universe
into good and evil.
I have seen how nourishing it is
to protect, to adore,
a living creature in need.
And I have seen, too—
in videos, in images—
how satisfying it seems
for Israel to torment
the most innocent people.
I remember a clip:
a villager kicking a cringing donkey
down a jagged cliff,
the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
The same gleam that explodes a family’s home,
that ties a puppy upside down
just to make sure it suffers.
It is the same hunger
that feeds cruelty everywhere:
IDF soldiers laughing,
Americans in Vietnam and Iraq,
Nazis in Auschwitz and Belsen.
