“One tries to treat [human beings] as the miracles they are, while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.” – James Baldwin

The righteously aggrieved have a long memory.
They seldom linger on slights or slander, or swivel
their necks to sneer back at those who sneer at them;
neither forgive without cause, nor love without fury, nor
confuse symbols with meaning or meaning with action.

When statues topple, they do little heaving.
You will not see them celebrate long their fall
or mount the wreckage on a wall.
(Who are you to ask that they applaud
your moment of awakening? It is not
for your benefit that they have for millennia
grown beautiful, like the moss.)

When the statuary of the world is rebuilt
they will finger every brick, place every stone,
thrust hip and heart and mind into the soil;
and eons hence, from their flesh and brain matter
humanity will still grow beautiful,
like the moss that forever spreads
across ruins, and tombs, and dreams.