I am counting white columns,
marble-carved, big and tall.
I see the pale imitation of civilization,
all color bleached away, a lie.
I am counting columns,
1,
2,
3,
4
stately columns shining bright,
mourning white, that's in season now.
There are no more wall-written subway prophets.
Ads cover every spare inch of creation
in this holy Christian nation.
Would Jesus weep?
He was laid down wrapped in white,
by women with brown hands,
another dead brown man,
and bathed, in death.
I don't believe in God, but I believe.
I do believe I see another column --
a hand-me-down from the martial god
of never giving up on lost causes.
We are all St. Jude's children today,
believe it or not.
We stand invisible in the noonday sun,
a ripple.
Absent as water vapor waiting for the rains,
we sleep in the shadow of the people's column,
and in the darkness, each heart burns and beats,
burns and beats.
The effect.
A child sobs and a mother whispers,
a man bends to pray and another man gracefully makes way.
The beats count the passing time; day swings
to night, swings to day, a slow bewildered march.
Let me be bewildered,
in this press of shadows sharing hope in paper cups.
Sleep, eat, cry. Rejoice, live, die --
and keep a dream in each shirt pocket.
Feed it from your own plate by your own hand.
Sing to it, sing long, a wordless nameless song.
Raise it on poetry and grief.
Raise it on the cries of mourners,
the cries of lovers,
the neverending wind and the wings
too wide to fit in just one place.
With crimson tongue it will learn to speak,
recite every name of every sorrow,
and crow the morning in.
