For Sergei Brushko
Give me your glasses
then you eyes – a second sight
necessary to envision what I have
not lived – and that by mere chance
my mother confessed – god spoke to her
Go to America – where you were born.
My father – the war was his adventure
and me –the first generation of this family
escaped Chernobyl – but I must be the west
witness – lest we forget the complications
of modern life – of empire and heat of energy
and human frailty. Sergei – even from the grave
your photos haunt and chronicle – the quick and
the dead – wake them all with your eyes
bring us not to commemoration, or to remembrance
but to action and diligence
bring us home
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