I have not cried out against the crimes of my country

The Tongues We Speak:

Escaped from those burning buildings, the past,

What balance can any of us hope for?

 

I was comparing lipsticks

The day Nagasaki vanished.

 

The day Solzhenitsyn disappeared into the Gulag

I was attending a cocktail party.

 

Perhaps there are only ashes in my handbag.

 

A man at the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street

Tried to sweep me into a trash barrel and I almost agreed.

 

Already the dried blood was sifting along my wrists.

 

Already my own hands

Were tightening around my throat

 

 

But Sorrow saved me, Sorrow gave me an image

Of bombs like human tears watering the world’s gardens.

 

How could I not answer?

 

Since then I have been planting words

In every windowbox, poking them to grow up.

 

What’s God, That he should be mindful of me?

Patricia Goedicke.

ntodd