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Starting
Point She
bore a son on the run, another roadside baby
By KILIAN McDONNELL
I am indebted to M. Shaun Kopeland
for calling my attention to the news item in the European section of the London
Times on Feb. 12, 1992. A pregnant Moslem woman living in Naples, Italy, was
walking down a road when her water broke. She soon went into labor. The poem
was prompted by this incident.
The water broke as I, a Moslem in a Catholic land,
was crossing the frantic Corso. I leaned my great protruding selves
against a wall, my clothes plastered to our skin. A black in a crowded
bus with wet pants? I still had time, so I began to walk along the road.
The terror fell at the four mile mark, as meltdown rants against the wave
on wave of inland pain. Galaxies of bolts protest against the universe. I
have no time as I strain to lie upon the concrete curbing where I will
have a roadside baby. Ladies pushing grocery carts pause, rearranging
their hair, not disturbing vast eternal plans, they walk away. A boy
points, Look what the niggers doing! The garbage men park
the truck to collect the decay of our humanity and stay to see the
spectacle in living color. Not unobserved but unassisted, I bear my son
and tear away my skirt for swaddling cloth -- Naples does not stir and
Vesuvius is silent. You know in the prophets Somalia it is not
so.
Benedictine Fr. Kilian McDonnell is president of the Institute
for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. Johns University in
Collegeville, Minn. He is author of The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The
Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Liturgical Press).
National Catholic Reporter, December 11,
1998
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