Epiphany

How dare we ever lift our heads again,
proclaiming we are wise?
How dare we  raise our guilty hands
to seek to touch, to hold, the ones we love?

We rovers shall not ever rove again contentedly
or think, as we once did, like fools,
that stars lead on to happy destinies.

No distant compass point shall be our aim
since, after what we caused in this small citadel
outside Jerusalem where Rachel weeps,
all roadways of the world
will always bring us here again.

To blood.

Our sense of our nobility, of sacred self,  is gone.
The journey from the East
we thought would bring us peace
was at a price we had not countenanced --
the massacre of Innocents.

A reaving, yes, of them,
and yes, of us,
from joying both in what we found
in Bethlehem
and in what once was ours,
what we had wandered from --
those palaces, and wealth, and dignity
that only royalty may, without thought or care, possess.
Doubtless others, soon,  will call us blessed
for what we saw before the aftermath.

They do not know what blood smells like,
how loud and long a baby dashed or torn in two
may wail.

They do not know how death has hollowed out
our eyes.