Let Them Not Say

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw. 

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard. 

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled. 

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands. 

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough. 

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned. 

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

--Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet, from Ledger (2020)