If I could delete the memory,
if I could wash it from your mind, if I could sweep it
over the edge of the planet far out into space
and let the stars blow out in horror

If I could break the clock, if I could yank its ruthless hands
back 20 years, if I could build dam after dam
and back up Time’s river to 1986 before Kenya, before Ethiopia,
before Gilo, before all of it if I could

make it so that it never happened:
vanish the soldiers, dry up the river, return your mother
and father and brother to you, put your village back,
every house, every cow, every stalk of sorghum and the calm

wind and the sweet dripping of peace------
You are not 25. You have suffered beyond time
back beyond any counting of days to the first time
a man picked up a stone and struck the skull of his brother’s

boy, to the first thought in a human mind
of grinding the seed of a fellow human into extinction.
You have walked through centuries of pain oh if only
I could if somehow I could . . .

But then you would not have
those centuries of strength within you,
you would not have that centuries-old heart
that knows, deep, the worth of each life

you would not have
your eyes of wisdom, your blessing of knowing
how to speak of a better world, a world
where adults no longer slaughter children,

where human life weighs more on the scale
than riches for a few. I cannot tell you
what it is that broke inside
when I heard the heaviness and ache,

the unspeakable unsaid behind your words
that was clearly said in your very breath and breathless
pause of grief.
I can only tell you I yearn (the word we learned this morning)

I yearn for the healing of those wounds deep inside you
and I can tell you there are many more like me, growing in number
we who have had enough centuries of weeping and bandaging
after we let those wielding death have their way,

we who have had enough centuries to know
it is past time to stop the slashing and drilling of flesh,
the wounding and extraction of the human heart—
not theirs, not ours—for there is only One

human heart undivided by borders and markets.

Teach me from your language the Dinka words
for “one” and “we”—
“one” as in “one indivisible,” “one” as in
before counting and adding, possession and accumulation

and teach me “we” as in “we can,” “we” before the lie of separation,
before any Other
that betrayed and destroyed its own kind, the “we” that is indestructible,
the “we” that can choose, can change, can see

through the blindness of “I.”

Dut, we share only one heart and it beats for a world more just
and for a turning back from the brink.
It beats an uncrushable, unstarvable music beyond blood and pain,
a ceaseless music

It beats for peace, the peaceful flourishing
of the one heart that flows through all tribes and peoples
and that just might, in the end, rise up and pull us all
from our rapid, collective falling.