They bent with warm and comforting hands

to rescue those crushed beneath the crumbled weight of dwelling places

gasping for life at each minute's close

I come to bind your brokenness

I come to heal your wounds

I come to touch your heart with tenderness

I come to stand in silent prayer over your remains

With warm, assuaging hands

to lift you from your demise

Then kind words to whisper into your brokenness

Water to quench your parching lips

We shall find your faces kind

Beneath your scattered remembrances

We shall find your arms unbroken

Ready to rebuild lost abodes

I go where no earthly pains disturb

I go from whence this life called me into consciousness

I go to watch you from the silence

In haste, not because I despise you - left behind

Expansive hearts, warm and beating

to hearten those trapped in terror

Then lead them into fields

Wherein flowers of hope, in resplendence, bloom.

The author, Courtney Hogarth, is a Jamaican student at the Central Fine Arts Academy in Beijing

(China Daily 05/24/2008 page4)