They sing Jerusalem

Someone sings
Gierusalemme, ikhaya lami
And the whole world dances along
Yet another one has claimed that town to be
His home, now
And the whole world dances along

They sang Deus lo vult in 95
To the tune of an Urban pope, the second
And shortly thereafter
Crosses waded knee-deep through blood
Oh holy urban killing field!


They sang to the tunes of church bells
When they raided the ghettos across Europe
With tales so tall to make every Jew hide away in fear
And a Vision of Peace was meant to be
A homestead
Already occupied and occupied to be

And sang to Sieg heil!
To finish in smoke the racist madness that
Supremacist beliefs had set alight

Again, a Vision of Peace was meant to be
A homestead
Still occupied and occupied to be

They sangYerushalayim shel zahav
After a week of gunfire had lit a mount called Zion
And the sound of bullets is echoing on
Till today

They sang to
Ya zahrat al mada’in
Ya qudsu, madinat aṣ-ṣalaa
And red flowers detonated on white shirts
In bus number 18
And in bus number 18 again
And then some

They sang with Miri Aloni
Shir la-shalom
When bullets un-sealed the Oslo agreement
And a nobel peace prize sank into its tomb

My visionary self sings me a lullaby
When a roof covers
The house that Jack built
And turns it into a museum critically commemorating
A once-upon a time tale of
Tales in scripture dividing mankind for way too long

My cynical self sings me an unholy wish of peace
For the cynical Vision of Peace
If only the Americans had had sense in their inhumanity
And dropped the bomb not on Japan
But on that divisive city so that we all may
Live. In. Peace.

Someone sings, in his language,
Gierusalemme
And the whole world just dances along

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