Once in Minneapolis

This is not Damascus, not Baku, In the peaceful state read the signs: "Children live in this house above! House, please do not catch fire!"

Adults, come to your senses now, Do not play dangerously with flame, Children there—on the third floor, Please, oh please do not burn them!

Let them sleep peacefully in their homes, Ride to school on their native routes, Do not shoot bullets at the young In Palestine, Haifa, and Beirut.

Do not explode... Though not of that, There are other signs by the door: I believe in love and in goodness, People—I believe in our goodness! In the fact that we are not yet beasts.

P.S. I went to help the volunteers. I took a brush, dustpan and bucket, but arrived too late: all the streets were swept of glass, only the charred, gutted shops gaped with black emptiness, gas stations burned to ash.

Volunteers from churches, restaurants and just ordinary people, feed whoever wants and hand out groceries. Even in courtyards they grill food, treating neighbors and passersby.

For people were left without stores. All I could do was see the burned businesses, read the graffiti on the walls. Among them, one line overwhelmed me: "Children live upstairs. Please, do not set fire!"

...I pull up to the intersection, stop at a red light. A tipsy Black man—not a young man but a guy with a bare torso—began wiping the headlights of my old Honda with his shirt. After all this tension, we both felt so good, I gladly gave him my change, he moved to the next car and there they are smiling; I hear them say—"no cash"—and he laughs too, says—"nothing needed"—and doesn't stop, keeps wiping the headlights.

It was so wonderful—words cannot describe it!

People remain people.

May 2020