__and as they spoke, the terror receded
__the bells in the towns and the cities were ringing

For everyone who suffers from oppression, Sanctuary.
For ourselves, our communities, our families, our children,
our friends and neighbors, the animals who share their lives with us,
for all of us who are clandestinely enslaved,
I ask for sanctuary.

I ask for sanctuary from those
who -- rather than informing and openly consulting with the American people --
secretly plot byzantine solutions to real terrors.

From incomprehensible, unendurable psychological torture,
I ask for sanctuary.

Sanctuary
from those who suppress our voices,
from those,
who believing their own voices more important,
have diverted our voices
as the waters of the mountains are stolen by the cities.

From those who believe that life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness
are of no consequence,

I ask for sanctuary.

Long ago, when the vicious enmity of conquered nations
was disregarded in a search for allies for a battle on another front,
a festering cold war began
where the lines between friend and foe were eroded.

This work, Sanctuary, takes place half a century later,
at a time where shadow governments
clandestinely wage secret wars against each other,
regardless of the consequences to their own citizens.

__The narrator is a poet who was born near the end of World War II.