Erminia Passannanti: Two Poems of Compassion I wrote these two poems at different periods of my life. The first, In Memoriam , was composed in 1993, after my father had passed away and while my mother was suffering the devastating effects of a severe stroke. The poem recalls the dignity of their lives—my father, a prisoner of war, and my mother, an orphan of war—both of whom devoted their efforts and imagination to instilling in their children a renewed and untainted love for life. More than anything, it is a tribute to the endurance of their personalities and values, which remain vivid in my memory. Both my parents were teachers. My mother lost her father at the age of two due to a wound he had sustained during World War I, and her mother at six because of post-war malnutrition. She was placed in an orphanage in Naples, where she spent her youth until she graduated as a teacher. My father, a teacher of Italian, was working in Rhodes when, at the outbreak of World War II, he was recall...