HAMADA

You chose a better place
my love
This, too raw, harsh and cruel
for shining spirit to endure.

How mind and heart rebelled:
this is not how it should or could be.
If conscience and intelligence exist
this is not how it works.
Look at the injustices, the abuse,
how the weeds of unrighteousness
take over our earthly paradise.
The poisons of greed and folly
pollute and contaminate
not just the elements but space itself.

Gentlest of creatures, you.
Quick to observe
and though slow to judge, the logic
of what you witnessed and deduced
was blatant evidence enough
to darken any faith or hope
in the fairness of Fate
or in human goodness or sense.

The chasm between an opt out
and considered, truthful choice
is a hairsbreadth, an ocean apart.
No thing to label or fear.
Honour in the honesty
and the courage of desperation
won your day - this day -
my darling.

But, one thing you forgot
-or perhaps took with you-
is love itself.
And that is neither only here nor there
but wherever it’s seed is sewn - my love.
At the time it may have appeared to you,
on the scale of your careful calculations
as just another unbearable lost cause
a tiny factor dwarfed
by the towering horrors of desolation.
But, be sure, it is a hardy plant
rooted in something incorruptible
- the stuff of creative beatitude:
beyond all woe - even embracing it.
Space and time it’s minions.
It dies not.