A palace we will never know

I woke in the middle of the night two days ago, could not fall back to sleep, and commenced channel surfing until I chanced upon Frontline’s show on the Iraq insurgency. The violence chilled me, and left me with a feeling of despair and sorrow for everyone who lives in that most unfortunate country where fear of sudden and brutal death, no matter who you are, is the normal routine.

This morning, as I read in the newspapers about the wave of sectarian violence in Iraq this week, the nausea returns to darken my mood grayer than the February sky blanketing Chicago. Who are we, we humans, who do these things endlessly to each other without break or respite, without remorse, without questioning, always believing we will live forever in this world or the next, unafraid of what later generations will think of our slaughter and butchery, always justifying the unjustifiable, believing a few more deaths will pave the way to progress and peace, never admitting our primal fears that we may one day be prey and victim rather than hunter, and praying to god just before sacrificing the next victim?

And where are the gods while all this is happening? They sit it in a remote palace all their own—one we will never see nor know—and they do not laugh at us nor cry for us, for they do not know us, and we do not know them.