Page 27 - A Qualified Acceptance of Sorrow

with a watercourse constructed
parallel to it, flowing swiftly –
its depth unknown.

The engineers, the guards
(who’d just been doing their jobs)
were immobilized against the wall.

Theirs the horror, the hopelessness
of those who had fled homeland; they relived the desperation
of all whom they and others had shut out.

The designing bureaucrats
were continually swept away, not quite drowning
in the death-bloated torrent

until they cried out a thousand times for forgiveness
having finally seen each terrified face, felt
each child’s, each parent’s heartbroken torment.

6.
Pondering the capacity of a moment to hold eternity,
supposing that hope is intentional,
that we must trust in the possibility to transform this –

our reality – I wondered
if it were possible to heal self of selfishness
now, in what was left of an earthbound life-time

Then I saw a cross burning
Christ scorched and scorned.
I broke down and wept.

I saw men, hoods now transparent,
purple welts of the noose circling their necks
swollen features on their battered faces

saw them tremble with fear
and pain, pain rising up from wounds
inflicted simply because the other could –