Seeking so much to give, I have sealed my lips. I venture instead into what runs in the family, When my Sicilian grandfather met a Bedouin woman in Susa. She sprang from the sea and fell, A disgraced mermaid. She married the man whose countrymen gifted us Concentration camps and Pasta. The saint of my grandfather says, "O Master, let me not seek as much To be consoled as to console To be understood as to understand To be loved as to love For it is in giving that one receives It is in self-forgetting that one finds It is in pardoning that one is pardoned It is in dying that one is raised to eternal life." Though I embrace the words, I shall follow my own saint, The fallen mermaid of Susa, Who taught me no saint was needed.