Roses.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

J.M. Barrie, from "Courage: The Rectorial Address" at St. Andrew's University, May 3, 1922

Remember.

REMEMBRANCE

And this is where we went, I thought,

Now here, now there, upon the grass

Some forty years ago.

I had returned and walked along the streets

And saw the house where I was born

And grown and had my endless days.

The days being short now, simply I had come

To gaze and look and stare upon

The thought of that once endless maze of afternoons.

But most of all I wished to find the places where I ran

As dogs do run before or after boys,

The paths put down by Indians or brothers wise and swift

Pretending at a tribe.

I came to the ravine.

I half slid down the path

A man with graying hair but seeming supple thoughts

And saw the place was empty.

Fools! I thought. O, boys of this new year,

Why don’t you know the Abyss waits you here?

Ravines are special fine and lovely green

And secretive and wandering with apes and thugs

And bandit bees that steal from flowers to give to trees.

Caves echo here and creeks for wading after loot:

A water-strider, crayfish, precious stone

Or long-lost rubber boot --

It is a natural treasure-house, so why the silent place?

What’s happened to our boys that they no longer race

And stand them still to contemplate Christ’s handiwork:

His clear blood bled in syrups from the lovely wounded trees?

Why only bees and blackbird winds and bending grass?

No matter. Walk. Walk, look, and sweet recall.

I came upon an oak where once when I was twelve

I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down.

It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled.

My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter

And scaled up to rescue me.

"What were you doing there?" he said.

I did not tell. Rather drop me dead.

But I was there to place a note within a squirrel nest

On which I’d written some old secret thing now long forgot.

Now in the green ravine of middle years I stood

Beneath that tree. Why, why, I thought, my God,

It’s not so high. Why did I shriek?

It can’t be more than fifteen feet above. I’ll climb it handily.

And did.

And squatted like an aging ape alone and thanking God

That no one saw this ancient man at antics

Clutched grotesquely to the bole.

But then, ah God, what awe.

The squirrel’s hole and long-lost nest were there.

I lay upon the limb a long while, thinking.

I drank in all the leaves and clouds and weathers

Going by as mindless

As the days.

What, what, what if? I thought. But no. Some forty years beyond!

The note I’d put? It’s surely stolen off by now.

A boy or screech-owl’s pilfered, read, and tattered it.

It’s scattered to the lake like pollen, chestnut leaf

Or smoke of dandelion that breaks along the wind of time...

No. No.

I put my hand into the nest. I dug my fingers deep.

Nothing. And still more nothing. Yet digging further

I brought forth:

The note.

Like mothwings neatly powdered on themselves, and folded close

It had survived. No rains had touched, no sunlight bleached

Its stuff. It lay upon my palm. I knew its look:

Ruled paper from an old Sioux Indian Head scribble writing book.

What, what, oh, what had I put there in words

So many years ago?

I opened it. For now I had to know.

I opened it, and wept. I clung then to the tree

And let the tears flow out and down my chin.

Dear boy, strange child, who must have known the years

And reckoned time and smelled sweet death from flowers

In the far churchyard.

It was a message to the future, to myself.

Knowing one day I must arrive, come, seek, return.

From the young one to the old. From the me that was small

And fresh to the me that was large and no longer new.

What did it say that made me weep?

I remember you.

I remember you.

Ray Bradbury

Responsible.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Viktor Frankel, from Man's Search for Meaning

Remember.

I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember: he asked his father: “Can this be true?” This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?

And now the boy is turning to me: “Tell me,” he asks. “What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?”

And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. We could not prevent their deaths the first time, but if we forget them they will be killed a second time. And this time, it will be our responsibility.

And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, given on this day in 1986

Safe.

Always.

Wedding rings found by US army soldiers near the Buchenwald concentration camp ...

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel

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