When we were children, did we know

That the sound of rain would shred our hearts?

Rain falling like tears, heavy with grief.

A grandmother disappears under the pillaging waves.

A pink dolphin dies on the shores of a lake.

A terrified mother stifles her baby’s thirsty mewls.

All we can do, we who have rain,

Is walk unprotected to bear sodden witness.

Still we turn away when we pass on the street,

Lest we see reflected in another’s eyes such awful knowledge.

How shall we go on?

Her childhood:

Her family hiding from the Russian soldiers burning their home.

Her father carrying her on the streets after Ellis Island.

NO JEWS ALLOWED.

His grandfather:

Three young brothers newly arrived and starving off a boat from Ireland.

He asked a man if he could work on the docks.

NO IRISH WANTED.

Their life:

Their parents’ flight because their marriage was a crime.

They themselves fearing to return.

NO NEGROES HERE.

Recently me:

A bus driver told me I should be deported.

My kind isn’t wanted here.

GOD HATES QUEERS.

The vessels crack and crack and shatter.

Once broken glass glittered on pavement

In the cold November night within shuttered quarters.

Now metal fragments litter the ground

In the wastelands that housed villages.

What do we do when rage and fear

Make us forget what we sought to build?

When we close our ears to the wail of grief

That sounds the same torn from any throat?

When we break under the weight of repairing the world,

Who will hold us?