When I visited St Petersburg in 1990

The Russian Grandmothers wore black arm bands

with the intense need to tell a visitor

about 900 day siege of St Petersburg

100 thousand people starved to death

75 thousand bombs fell.

The Germans had all supply chains cut off

in the depths of cold winters.

Proud that they could suffer

Proud, 50 years later.

We don’t live with history this way

as if it’s a living thing.

My grandsons have no concept of war

And we want to say thank goodness

and yet……

The responsibility to integrate the other

has the weight of war as part of its continuum.

One world takes work

The united whole takes work

A paper doll chain of humans

holding the hand of the other!