The Weeper's Vocation Poem by Alla Bozarth

It’s my job to sit or stand and read
the newspaper each day and weep
over the stories. The tears are naturally
spontaneous prayers.

Praying can be soggy business.
What makes me weep the longest
and hardest is when something horrible
is finally over. I weep like the old women
of Moscow in 1992, who heard the Kremlin’s Cathedral Bells
ring out on Easter morning for the first time in 75 years.
They wept all day in joy. They wept for all the years
they could have been arrested for weeping over all that they missed.
They wept for all that they loved, long taken away, when this essential thing
was finally returned to them in their lifetimes~~
their freedom to pray out loud, to weep openly...
their freedom to remember out loud, to paint and to write down
what they loved and remembered, and to honor all the silent tears
that they and their loved ones had swallowed.

I weep like the jubilant people everywhere on August 14,1945,
when the end of the worst war in history was first proclaimed.
Nobody cried, “We lost the war, ” or “We won the war! ”
People cried, “The War is Over! ”
Families cried out at last all the years of tears they had held back for each other.
Darkened streets and living rooms were lit up to make up for long darkness.
Countless young children had never seen a glowing streetlight,
or all the windows open and every room of their houses illuminated at night.
Strangers kissed with their eyes closed.
In that first instinct, soldiers kissed the whole beautiful world they’d fought for.
Kissed women held in their arms the men who’d defended everyone’s freedom.
And the children. Children scooped up went dancing without an inkling,
all the way down the wide open streets of their future lives,
carried along without fear by a marching band of whistles and sirens and bells
and the music of songs~~ and everyone, moved by immense relief,
slid on home along pathways drenched with the hot dew
and the sweet rain of tears for all time.