Christian Poems
Morning on the Medicine Floor
The little monsters are sleeping like the dead,
each in his Holy Friday bed of coals,
etched in the impassivity of those
who carry their doom around in their own heads.
All night you've stood, janglingly awake,
for Jesus' sake who made the mountains move--
at times you thought this hour would never arrive--
success never crowned you but at least you stayed.
And now, all in a rush, the light that dawns
pours out its furnace down the face of the ward,
leaping the desks, and agitating the beds
like a raider come to release our bonds,
and all the penitents stir, and open their eyes,
and roll their stones away, and start to rise.
Medical Center VIII
You passed me in the hall
Outside an ER stall;
While begging you for water,
I shook with bitter laughter
And rolled a drunken eye--
Whose voice
Am I?
My tumor, far progressed,
You took for gastric distress.
My brother, who didn't know me,
Insisted nothing be told me--
You had to lie and lie--
Whose voice
Am I?
My pains grew worse last winter
Because my group home leader
Turned Jehovah's Witness
And cancelled the rites of Christmas
For all who lived inside--
Whose voice
Am I?
I left, as all had wished,
"against advice", and vanished,
Taking along with me
My anger and HIV
To blacken some more distant sky--
Whose voice
Am I?
The Poor Are Never With Us
(for the blind poet Jim Smith)
Dreams of Willie Davis
come to me like Doppler notes off trains:
his crooked walk, his toothless cry:
“Hey there, Foote!”—(no “Doctor”, I)
have stuttered back to lift
my spirits again.
Willie’s been gone a year,
maybe in Canada, maybe in Florida,
routing out his sack,
his ragged store of bric-a-brac,
for one more tour of the road.
His buried treasure,
sown beneath a vacant lot,
will never now be measured:
none of the agencies know where he’s gone.
They disappear,
like birds you thought would seek no southern air,
riding their magic carpet made of stones.
And if your door unfolds
to show their shapes, dustily grinning,
rich with half-imagined sins,
it soon blows shut again.
All's vanished, or sealed
in frames of loss
no fond varnish can dim,
like the boy brought in
dead to the ER this morning
(drugs, of course, the paramedics said)
with nothing in his pockets
but a handful of quarters
for cigarettes or video games,
an old Swiss pocket knife, not even opened,
and five pieces of string.
All vanished, all vanishing.
Is my blind poet still singing
from the steps of his wheelchair in New Haven,
"Think of my eyes that stare as vacancy signs,
there's room at the inn: Come in--"?
A visiting nurse
saw him once a day.
Elijah Hicks,
who taught me the book on HIV
the month before
his CD4 count tumbled,
sleeps in quiet ground--
and on-- and on.
You see them only once, as on a pane
more fleeting than any TV,
in progress down their destiny.
The poor are never with us: they don't remain.
Eighth Galilean Sonnet
He also lived when violence ruled the world:
he knew the caves—the fallout-sheltered doors
clattered behind him, showing well
the bombs would break them too-- there is no shelter from power,
it never can be unmade, only transformed.
They fought over loaves, and bragged of having swords,
and there he saw the dawning, perhaps ripe,
perhaps only a seed,
needed to draw the fruit out of Roman law.
They scorned it, and the world dissolved in blood,
while Christ remained to spur the grass beneath their feet,
a stubble then, but now grown tall,
bearing the sheaves aloft and feeding
the grace and filling of the Kingdom itself,
a power still—but power no longer law—
a maze of gentle magic, teasing words,
and blanket forgiveness. Fronting the Age of Aquarius,
the nature of power has altered. Power’s the mercy you do.
The little monsters are sleeping like the dead,
each in his Holy Friday bed of coals,
etched in the impassivity of those
who carry their doom around in their own heads.
All night you've stood, janglingly awake,
for Jesus' sake who made the mountains move--
at times you thought this hour would never arrive--
success never crowned you but at least you stayed.
And now, all in a rush, the light that dawns
pours out its furnace down the face of the ward,
leaping the desks, and agitating the beds
like a raider come to release our bonds,
and all the penitents stir, and open their eyes,
and roll their stones away, and start to rise.
Medical Center VIII
You passed me in the hall
Outside an ER stall;
While begging you for water,
I shook with bitter laughter
And rolled a drunken eye--
Whose voice
Am I?
My tumor, far progressed,
You took for gastric distress.
My brother, who didn't know me,
Insisted nothing be told me--
You had to lie and lie--
Whose voice
Am I?
My pains grew worse last winter
Because my group home leader
Turned Jehovah's Witness
And cancelled the rites of Christmas
For all who lived inside--
Whose voice
Am I?
I left, as all had wished,
"against advice", and vanished,
Taking along with me
My anger and HIV
To blacken some more distant sky--
Whose voice
Am I?
The Poor Are Never With Us
(for the blind poet Jim Smith)
Dreams of Willie Davis
come to me like Doppler notes off trains:
his crooked walk, his toothless cry:
“Hey there, Foote!”—(no “Doctor”, I)
have stuttered back to lift
my spirits again.
Willie’s been gone a year,
maybe in Canada, maybe in Florida,
routing out his sack,
his ragged store of bric-a-brac,
for one more tour of the road.
His buried treasure,
sown beneath a vacant lot,
will never now be measured:
none of the agencies know where he’s gone.
They disappear,
like birds you thought would seek no southern air,
riding their magic carpet made of stones.
And if your door unfolds
to show their shapes, dustily grinning,
rich with half-imagined sins,
it soon blows shut again.
All's vanished, or sealed
in frames of loss
no fond varnish can dim,
like the boy brought in
dead to the ER this morning
(drugs, of course, the paramedics said)
with nothing in his pockets
but a handful of quarters
for cigarettes or video games,
an old Swiss pocket knife, not even opened,
and five pieces of string.
All vanished, all vanishing.
Is my blind poet still singing
from the steps of his wheelchair in New Haven,
"Think of my eyes that stare as vacancy signs,
there's room at the inn: Come in--"?
A visiting nurse
saw him once a day.
Elijah Hicks,
who taught me the book on HIV
the month before
his CD4 count tumbled,
sleeps in quiet ground--
and on-- and on.
You see them only once, as on a pane
more fleeting than any TV,
in progress down their destiny.
The poor are never with us: they don't remain.
Eighth Galilean Sonnet
He also lived when violence ruled the world:
he knew the caves—the fallout-sheltered doors
clattered behind him, showing well
the bombs would break them too-- there is no shelter from power,
it never can be unmade, only transformed.
They fought over loaves, and bragged of having swords,
and there he saw the dawning, perhaps ripe,
perhaps only a seed,
needed to draw the fruit out of Roman law.
They scorned it, and the world dissolved in blood,
while Christ remained to spur the grass beneath their feet,
a stubble then, but now grown tall,
bearing the sheaves aloft and feeding
the grace and filling of the Kingdom itself,
a power still—but power no longer law—
a maze of gentle magic, teasing words,
and blanket forgiveness. Fronting the Age of Aquarius,
the nature of power has altered. Power’s the mercy you do.
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