Let Us Speak Out For Man

M. Zohar (January 2011) / translated by Issy Gershon

It has happened, it is happening, it shall happen –

So now's the time and here's the place

To speak out for man.

~ ~ ~

The situation here and now is neither a rehearsal nor a repetition,

It is not what has already been –

Things are clear even without comparing them to other, dark and infamous, places:

We are on the verge of an abyss and an evil spirit is hovering over the earth;

The sun still shines, the loquat still flowers –

While the clouds of terror condense and multiply.

And we are unwilling to believe – “It won’t happen to us”, so we deny;

(But it is already happening! – And it is real, it is no play! –

And what else must happen for us to agree to look plainly and see?)

And “The situation could be worse – it’s not so terribly bad”,

Soothe the analysts; and the compromisers collaborate –

Distribute decrees of appeasement, solicit and incite to consent,

Making kosher, and apparently purifying every horror and every crime:

“We’re not really like that – we simply have no alternative”;

“Look – that’s what everyone does!”;

“It’s either us or them”, and ‘They’ are never ‘Us’ –

'They' are the aliens, the ‘Them’ of every color and name;

And so ‘We’ and ‘Them’ fight, inflict injury and get hurt,

Time and again forever right, a dead end:

“With blood and fire, sperm and womb, we shall invade and conquer and purify” –

Thus ‘Us’, as well as ‘Them’; “We have the right!”, “It serves them right!” –

Thus speak the possessors of the Holy Word, based on a promise,

With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, demand the right of return

And settlement in the Land of the Forefathers ("ours, not theirs") –

Confiscating and disinheriting, uprooting and blocking and oppressing,

Shooting and stabbing and trampling; supervising and governing and policing,

Prosecuting and judging, blaming and justifying and punishing and avenging –

According to the law of the idols that we have created in our own image

(and absolutely not in the image of others).

~ ~ ~

Here and now we are together alive,

And there is no escaping the actions’ consequences –

As we do to others, so we hurt ourselves:

It is the same discrimination, the same hatred, it is the message of darkness;

These are the same complexes – patronizing and victimizing;

The same fear and ignorance unsettling and paralyzing,

Exploding in our faces and castrating the heart and spilling the guts;

The same violence and obtuseness, fanaticism and corruptness,

Imperiousness and ruthlessness, isolationism and suspiciousness –

There is no human and no home that they pass over.