SOMETIMES, THE WATER WILL NOT CHANGE INTO WINE

Eric writes what I won't -- can't -- on Qana (aka Cana):


Qana
By Eric Gamalinda

There's a room that no one enters.

Inside that room there's a woman

who's been absorbed by all that space.

Inside that woman there's a generation

no longer used to miracles,

there's a child whose gestures

are extinguished, already null.

Take another look:

underneath the rubble a room,

inside the room a woman,

inside the woman a parable

of providence already out

of date, the gift of the marvelous,

one evening drunk with love.

Once more:

a room, a woman, something small

and without a voice, who will perhaps

still find among the ruins

this ramshackle earth that suffers

from suffering. For peace is not

what it used to be, it is the future

made perfect by absence,

by obliteration. Our cruelty

is efficient, precise.

Look closer: the water

will not change to wine.