Grey Zone

Faded eyes, faded dreams Do not reflect the blue of sky. They only need bread, need to survive… You cannot warm them with foreign ideas. But what of their own? Yet where can it come from— The mind rejects all reasonable thought. They want silence—but here are automatics. Grey zone…

Gunshots will cover grey temples, As eternity stares purposefully into the soul. It is not easy, casting off identity, To live in a neutral, no-man's shelter. To be caught between black and white, In a space of lost bearings. With eyes smoke-filled—dreams shrouded In greyness alone.

The sky, blue-eyed through the smoke, gazes down Into the grey, everyday, bloodless vacuum. The sky aches, for it cares How we live and how we suffer. …It is not enough to know what Truth is— Truth must become you. Greyness, summoned by no-man's-land into the soul, A white banner without doubt will cast forth Before Love. Like a mother…

To "Plyne kacha" I rock my son. A tear salts the ache of piercing loss. "Heroes live! Enemies will perish"… Yet I watched war as a mother watches. With soul I gripped the hand of the dead "living one" Under "Heroes do not die!" I killed myself for the stranger as for my own— For a mother's heart there are no foreign children. Tear after tear rolled silently On the petals of my trembling joy. Will I manage to protect you, my son, From war's terrible claws, or will I not? I wept for the dead "living one" And for the living, condemned to die… And I did not divide them into mine and theirs, For I watched war as a mother watches. Broken dreams I gathered into prayer For hero and enemy alike. For who else can stop this war, If not she—the mother blackened with grief?!