When the end came they burned my home, my family, my life
But they left me my poems

And what my father said
With a smile which broke his face open wide

I thought I glimpsed a scholar or a prophet sitting there inside his wrinkles of skin like so many pale finale curtains falling

"Sometimes we search for our potential in the ruins

But what we need is to build it

All over again.

And though history will reveal us tearing it down,
Over and over,
So many times that you begin to wonder Why they built it in the first place,
Our supreme purpose is to build it again.
The reason for its birth no longer matters
Because the bridge breaches the abyss
And we cross it together.
There is, at least, power in that."

These are the words of my father.