Love Being Russian
As I said, I am on stage with Elvira. She invites me to speak.
“Love being Russian,” I begin. “Cherish your traditions. Nurture your lives and create your own future. The quick fix of foreign ways will only provoke frustration and disappointment. If you change, make the changes yourselves, make them in your own lives . . . .” I end with a poem I wrote:
My Russian Friends,
Wait for us and we’ll come back,
But wait with all your heart.
We need your waiting,
We need your patience.
Your struggle allows us time to catch up,
We who are ahead.
Invite us into your nests
And reach out to us.
Share with us your secret, your paradox
that friends come first,
despite a system that commands all to be no one,
except the one who is all.
Share with us your conscience
your memory of the horrors of war,
your soul that lures us to be with God.
Share with us your other secret
our future is knowing the past.
How else can we purge life from the precipice of holocaust?
It is you who may save us
Through your waiting.…
