The sky is not innocent

 The sky is innocent today — or any day.

It is the oldest lie.
The gods at rest in their unbothered light,
heaven sealed against the smell of us.

The waters rise — and rise — and rise —
rage learning to breathe,
the drowned filling the deep.
We cling to splintered wood
as though surviving were still an argument.
Salt where prayers were.
We call upward —
not with hope —
only out of habit.

The gods do not answer.
They are not troubled.
Above Gaza the sky was blue.
Above Lebanon the sky remained untouched.
Above every shore we were erased from,
the sky was immaculate.

Heaven is comfortable.
The peace up there requires the fire down here.
The calm requires the drowning.
The light requires our blood.
They watch us —
with concern carefully measured
to cost them nothing.

I will not look up again.
Not in grief.
Not in rage.
Not in the old reflex of a people
taught to beg from those who built this voyage.

I surrender

to the sea that rages without pretending.
to the wind that touches every shore.
to the birds — who know no borders in their path.

and to the wood beneath us,
patient and unjudging,
that does not ask
who deserves to float.

If there is another world
it will not descend from above.

It will rise
from the still-breathing,
the still-floating,
the ones who finally learned —

that the sky
was never
on our side.

Ahmad Baker

March 2026