"… it's been, well, calling it a challenge would be… inadequate. It's been hell."

The room was quiet now.

"Our world went to hell on March 14, 2003. That's the only way I can describe it, because we still don't know what happened, and frankly, I don't think we ever will. I have hundreds of scientists still working away at this every day, throwing all sorts of theories and tests and experiments at it, trying to tell me where that Wave came from and where it took all our friends and families. They've been studying it for years now, and they are no closer to knowing. So perhaps it's time to come at it from a different angle, a different kind of knowing. That's why Adam Ford is here tonight. He's not a scientist, he's a poet, and from where I stand looking back at everything that's happened since the Disappearance, I reckon his way of trying to come at the meaning of it all is every bit as valid as all those scientists writing all those reports for me. Probably more so." He gestured to the poet to make his way to the microphone. "Adam?"

Loud applause carried the poet laureate up onto the stage and the president down from it. Ford pulled a single sheet of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket and coughed before thanking Kipper and waiting for the minor roar to die down. When the room was quiet again, he read.

"This is a poem called 'Aftermath,'" he said. "They weren't lost at sea. They are not missing in action. We weren't at their side as they breathed their last. There are no bodies to identify. They were here. Then they weren't. We're left behind with nothing to point to, No evidence that says, 'This happened here,' No shadows burned into the sides of buildings, No mountain of glasses, suitcases, and shoes, No pile of skulls, no handheld footage Of papers and shattered glass raining down. Just the near-infinite density of collected grief That distorts our universe like a black hole- Grief that we, who remain, All bear as one as we search for our place In this strange, new, far-too-different world."