For My Mother

Michael Peach

When I think of you, you’re always in the garden;
Brown as the earth and hardy as an oak,
Yet, like a flower, tender in times of drought.

Jerusalem
7 May 1995

How ironic and poetically just That the blatant ethnic-cleansing And

Could anything ever persuade The fatalistic fundamentalists, Who literalize and

If the complex causes of the catalytic Sado-masochistic syndrome Of

Let’s be straight. Although you deny it, In practice you’ve

Whereas the good and loving One God Endows all humans

Though for many reasons The “two-state solution” Is now dead,