VERSES WRITTEN ON SAND-M. RAVITCH

In the garden. Summer's end./ Evening On a bench.The second highest tower burns in the west./The night wind has risen and with the rake I begin to compose a poem in the sand:/We are destructive, and friends' blood is as thin as water to us./Can I ask God or man why this is so?/It seems relatively easy to be good./Like the slaughterer's knife we are always in the right./I ask you again, God or man/It seems so difficult to fully give way to strife./We destroy, but who else sings on about turning the other cheek to the oppressor/--And under our jackets we can hardly hide the newly acquired weapon./In the garden. Summer's end. /Evening. I rise from the bench/The darkness has eclipsed the last of the towers./ simply say farewell to the emptiness/and in the darkness trample on my poem written in the sand.