Conversation with Grandfather
(click image to enlarge)
Daiva Diana
PART II
Do you know how you went on living?
Do you know how your wife brought you food to the jail?
Do you know how they’d take it and
Never tell her that you were already gone?
Do you know how she learned of your fate?
Do you know how only in passing
Was she told that you already had died?
Do you know how your wife mourned for you?
Do you know how she grieved for you?
Do you know how she looked for you,
With your child in her belly
Digging ice-frozen ground with her bare hands
So she could find you?
So she could bury you?
So she could show you her love
In that last Sacred Rite?
Do you know how digging like that
She found other bodies but not yours?
Do you know how she had to defend herself
From stray hungry dogs
And hide from traitors alike?
Do you know how deathly ill
She fell after losing you?
Do you know how much she loved you?
Do you know how many days and nights
For the rest of her life
She would weep for you?
Do you know how your loved ones
Had to flee their home?
Do you know how they lost all they had
But their lives and some of their minds?
Do you know how they lived in the city
On some bread
And some tea with a few sugar lumps?
Do you know how
Your little daughter
Walked cold streets barefoot?
Do you know how
She would stand for hours
Staring longingly at candy displays
In the windows of the city stores?
Do you know how she hungered
For the joy of that sweetness,
Which would always evade her?
Do you know how for the great celebration
Of her First Holy Communion,
She wore a black dress
Among other girls,
All adorned in white garments?
Do you know
How your daughter
Longed to find your remains?
Do you know
How she never could find
Peace and joy all her life?
Do you know how
She fought for your existence
When the world kept denying
That you had ever been?
Do you know how
Your son, not yet born
At the time of your passing,
Was left speechless
For the first five years
Of his short-lived life?
Do you know how
He stammered through childhood,
Choked by pain of
Never seeing you?
Do you know how he grit his teeth
Suffocating from the rage
That could not be expressed?
Do you know how
He drowned his pain
Seeing tears of the loved ones
Silenced by unending fears?
Do you know that
You were always remembered?
Do you know that
You were always loved?
Do you know that
Your life mattered?
All your twenty-nine years?
Yes, I do, Love…
Yes, I do know all of that…
You too, Love,
Know the Truth…