Poetry

Easter in Our Palms

When children drink from puddles carved by bombs

from battle tanks emblazon-sprayed with Zs,

our prayers cry out this Sunday of the Palms.

 

How dare we sip our tea or sing the Psalms

while Ukraine bunkers boom with ghostlike shrieks

and old men drink from puddles, maimed by bombs

 

as beardless soldiers gag the rebel songs

of white-winged neighbors cycling blackened streets?

Our requiem prayer this Sunday of the Swans

 

begs mercy for a motherland of moms,

pleads Alphas locking horns: at once, release!

No toddlers must drink puddles, eat their bombs

 

as Councils spin spent wheels with talks of arms

while dying towns crave Ministries of Peace.

Yet silence reigns this Sunday of the Palms—

 

Oh God, our beggar world implores Your alms

to suture hearts with Holy balm so deep

that youth will frisk in puddles, freed from bombs

Our prayers arise this Sunday in our palms

Jeannette Tien-Wei Law

Jeannette Tien-Wei Law is an international educator who makes her home in Milan, Italy. An American of Chinese descent, she was born to first-generation refugees. Her alma maters, Wellesley College and Cambridge University, awarded her poetry with the Florence Annette Wing Prize, Amanda Sternberg Memorial Award, Rima Alamuddin Prize, and the prestigious Quiller-Couch Prize. She is a 2022 recipient of the global Newman Prize for English Jueju, an innovative form of classical Chinese poetry in English. Ms. Law’s poems have been published in the spiritual anthology Becoming Fire, while her prose has supported oral history and memoir projects for members of the Organization of Chinese Americans. http://sageadvising.net/poetry-blog/

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