Bruno Bettleheim

You work a lifetime on one idea

and they take it from you,

strike a match page by page,

forcing you to transform. 

These people still do not know

the strength of rape,

how you quest for learning,

how music flows through cell blocks,

how even children see a future. 

Somehow the loss of a manuscript

changed you into something

else, and you survived,

came across the ocean,

created a better vision

explaining to all of us

how we think, how we know.

Michael H. Brownstein