Our Sages Taught:
The higher the tower,
the fewer the bricks.
The fewer the bricks,
the higher the value.
So high, in fact, they were prized
over human life itself.
We (sometimes) build to our own
detriment
We (sometimes) progress at our own
expense
We value many things above human life
as a human race and even,
yes, individually
Though I can’t crack the code:
How to care about each life lost
without losing our minds;
How to protect our psyches
without losing our humanity
Is it even a choice anymore
with the scale of human tragedy
in our era?
Or do we ask such questions only to
excuse ourselves?
The radio blares the death of a woman,
Unnamed,
found shot and half –
Undressed
I try to pause for a moment to feel
Something
for her –
to care.
I feel my stomach clench
as the driver dials another station
Our Sages Say:
when a brick fell from the tower-top
everyone wept
But when a human fell, no one
noticed.
Are we still building the tower
all these eons later?
Are we no better than they?
What if we flipped the tower around
so that we faced down, to our broken world
instead of up, at our vain ambitions?
What if we made human life
truly
our top priority?
Could we do it?
Could we at least try?
Could this be the year of Tower Reversed?
What would we need to do
to make it so?
