TODAY, I BECOME AN AMERICAN (Sept. 11th, 2001)

Filled with wonder, an old man fingers the numbers
tatooed 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.