I See That I Must Give What

Though The Contradictions Of War Seem Sudden And Simultaneous, History Stalks Before It Strikes. Something Tolerated Soon Becomes Something Good.

I Wanted A Line In A Poem To Be The Hollow Ney Of The Dervish Orchestra Whose Plaintive Wail Is A Call To God. But All I Achieved Was Awkward Shrieking. Not Even The Pure Shriek Of A Reed In The Rain.

The Shadow Past Is Shaped By Everything That Never Happened. Invisible, It Melts The Present Like Rain Through Karst.

History Is The Gradual Instant

Even As A Child, Even As My Blood-past Was Drained From Me, I Understood That If I Were Strong Enough To Accept It, I Was Being Offered A Second History.