Filled with wonder, an old man fingers the numbers

tattooed on his left arm and says to me:

“Today, I become an American.

Today, words become real,

strong and powerful like old oak trees:

anguish, anger, angels.

Today, words shimmer frail and sheer

like the wings of a butterfly:

trust, tomorrow, together.

I stare at the silhouettes of broken steel beams

reaching toward the sky like outstretched hands,

and I stumble over the pictures of my youth:

Bombs and stars, hunger and smoke, skeletal

shapes left in deserted camps

like so many seeds.

We planted no hatred.

We grew no pain.

The hate became the shell

that held me together;

the pain became my shield

that kept others away.

Now, shells and shields break

with these shattered lives.”

My youngest daughter asks:  Momo,

why do men make knives?

We know we are the lucky ones:  we talk, we

ask, even when we have no answers.