Damage to Lebanon as of August 11, 2006

The Journey

There is no perfect
past to go back to. Each time I look
into your eyes, I see the long hesitation
of ten thousand years, our mothers' mothers
sitting under the shade trees on boxes, waiting.
There is some great question in your eye that no
longer needs asking: the ball
glistening, wet; the black iris
intense. We know the same things.
What you wait for, I wait for.

Toi Derricotte, Pittsburgh poet and co-founder of Cave Canem, an annual black poets' retreat

If all who have begged help
From me in this world,
All the holy innocents,
Broken wives, and cripples,
The imprisoned, the suicidal -
If they had sent me one kopeck
I should have become richer
than all Egypt...
But they did not send me kopecks,
Instead they shared with me their strength,
And so nothing in the world
Is stronger than I,
And I can bear anything, even this.

Anna Akhmatova
(Thanks, Lina!)