Brahms’ Requiem: Movement 1 Reflection by Alphia Sherif

by | Mar 28, 2022 | Culture and Science of Nonviolence | 0 comments

The night moonlight died

Mountains trembled their cedar trees

bowed the little stems that cascaded like stars between rivers

Now to gather the tree trunks boulders, burdens the fog

Legend are the fish all dead together in a cauldron of death

Stiff smiles push tears behind tired eyes

Every wail silenced inside

Only nails sealing coffins are heard tonight

Voices fall on deaf ears hands raised in solidarity

A game of chess is not necessary

When minds confine life

Cities fall into a lull

Until fire consumes a delusion peace

Drums pound inside my chest

My heartbeat returns from its death

Blood runs through my vein, shaking off drowsy remnants

Even now my heart aches for trees put to rest

Mountains stand tall for terrors I do not forget

Still stars shine, even if its only at night

Neighbors as close as atom to atom

In contact with someone at all times

No matter how far they may seem

Healing starts with company

Blood does not stop with someone else’s pressure

But persist peace begins to settle in

Remember how to breathe

Water surrounds me when I sink

Surrender to a warmth that wont ever release

For those of us living in fear of others like us

Who await the choices of others

Who go to the warm stove to go and get

An eruption is a mountain, pure fantasy

Here what’s real is gone for good

It is as life were shaped in emergency

The soft light of grieving death

radiated with warmth, glows alive

It matters how one passes and who they are

We all suffer loss

Throughout the day we speak to the dead

Say, ill return someday to save your soul

With the independent sky a technique to avoid a thirsty bullet

We are the buried,

Water surrounds when we wade into the deep

For those of us who live on short strings

We rush to find life again, breath again

We seek hope not seen with this long road

For decades, the magnitude of pain has prevailed

The great pandemic, the hounds of the hurricanes and the theft of the stars

Worship death in a big way

Lost in murder are pieces of my faith

Louder than the other

For there is unburied water around us when we wade into the deep

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