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POETRY
Cleaning Women
Night-people, their hour of rising Is with the dark:
the last elevators Descending at six in the office towers, Carry the
power-suits and their briefcases; The next going up bring the
Royce-Rolls Maintenance carts, and the maids in disposable Gloves. One by
one fanning out to their floors Assigned, they part company in
Spanish, Vietnamese, Ghetto, Greek: cheerful night-wishes For the
nights work to be done, gleaning The littered fields where
profit-takers Have reaped their harvest. Dust is laid, trash Bagged,
executive carpets cleaned. The hours Wear on. Down a midnight hallway, blank
as computer Screens before mornings numbers rise again green, A
womans chocolate contralto bleeds in song: how She will come
rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
-- Nancy G. Westerfield Kearney, Neb.
A Scripture Lesson in Kenya
In Swahili theres no distinguishing gender in
words, the scholar explains, no noun or pronoun to denote man from
woman, he from she, There is only person, only
human.
Imagine how that would be: no signs that write you out
of roadwork, no sacred text in which youre invisible or by
subtraction, irrelevant. No reserving the Imago Dei for the anatomically
correct.
The Nairobi-born scholar concludes her Scripture text, the
visiting students their reverie. Just one question: Does she ever mind
not having a word to reflect her genders
distinctness?
No. She minds only the long reach to borrow
foreign words that would deny her priestly call.
-- Kathleen R. OToole Baltimore
The Weight of Little Things
Each step was counted like the prophets on his
flight to Medina. The Serb farmer along the road guarded his front door
with a loaded pistol after having locked his wife and daughter inside. We
looked the other way, pretending not to notice the burnt Albanian
farmhouse across the field from his. Neighbor fighting
neighbor, Fatima said. Back home in Urosevac, our Yugoslav
neighbors brought us bread on Fridays for Sabbath. Our children shared
sweets with theirs, Melaim would meet with Vlajko down at the
tobacconists for tea and gossip, and always the televised soccer
game together after dinner Tuesday evenings. We heard rumors, but nothing
ever came of them. One morning we woke up and all the doors on our
street were painted with an S. All, except ours. Vlajko was furious.
Those damn nationals, he said, scrubbing his door as he
cursed. There were little things; the red leaflets stuck in the cracks
of the mosque wall, teasing from the other school boys when they saw
Zenels circumcised penis asking him if he was really born of
a dog. Yes, there were little things Wed survived them before.
The army had always left us alone. When the tanks rolled down our road
that day, we packed our things and left. Not much weight to carry, just
the children, some papers and clothes, our neighbors Serbian bread on
our backs.
-- Jason Ranek Sioux Falls, S.D.
Walking Through Paradise with a Friend Who
Doesnt Believe
At the end of the path you expect nothing, a clearing
perhaps and then pure air, no trace of animal droppings, insect bites,
just an opening in the trees, an end of the path cleared before us, a
suddenly treeless empty plain, not even the sounds of birds chirping.
Here is the story that you desire. There will be no suffering, no
cross. Everyone you love will feel good. Around each neck a chain with a
rock, instead of that man on a cross. You would celebrate the caves of
birth.
For me, there are rocks and blood, nails and broken bones, but
I am not alone in this. We are all within this one suffering body of
life, Christ, so long as we breathe, but there is a window, a clearing,
an opening in the wall, a way out of the cave. Someone has shown us
the opening by passing through it first and now calls us along this
way.
I will meet you in that clearing, friend. Whatever we go
through, well go through. We will sing together in Paradise where
we have begun to sing even now.
-- Leo Luke Marcello Lake Charles, La.
National Catholic Reporter, July 30,
1999
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