After receiving the relentless news
and experiencing the terrible invasion,
I was strangely unafraid, and even glad
as I sank into each day as into a soft pillow
and wafted like a child into healing sleep.
Perhaps it was simply resignation.
I knew it as unconditional peace.
Pain, I knew, would come later.
Let it.
I turned over on my pillow
and sank into another
white dream.
by Robert Friend, from Dancing With A Tiger: Poems 1941-1998 (Spuyten Duyvil).