Worth passing on, Ken. An interesting attempt to get at the
contradictions, the corrections perhaps...

Doug
On 17-May-05, at 7:03 AM, Ken Wolman wrote:

> Oh boy am I gonna regret this...I write very few religious subject
> poems
> but I once read a letter by the Spanish Jesuit Peter Claver of his work
> among the newly-arrived slaves brought to South America, and it sort of
> had at me.
>
> THE PRAYER OF PETER CLAVER, S.J.
> (CARTAGENA, 1635)
>
> 1
>
> Every day they bring us these ruins stacked
> like spent firewood upon the muddy planks.
> I sit safe, Father, at end of day, but
> all I can see in the lamplight, in my book,
> are their eyes, glowing like the eyes of cats.
> I hear their cat-voices, hissing, snarling,
> crying out the names of their gods which are
> one name, Yours: a feral madrigal of fear
> of abandonment that You have left them only
> Your many names to curse and weep, chant
> the names of those whose bodies lay in chains
> at the Atlantic bottom, gifts to the sea
> whose god also bears Your name.
>
> And each day I go to them, build fires,
> give food, tell them Your name, the Father of slaves
> they are and shall become, the Father of free men
> they are and shall remain: bathe their wounds
> in sacramental wine, whisper of how my
> little living water frees them, not from chains,
> sweat, or the lash, but from the fear that
> You would leave them.
>
> 2
>
> Father-God, forgive me for giving them their gods,
> belief in Your sacred many Selves
> salved upon their dark, mangled flesh.
>
> Father-God, forgive me the trespass of a promise
> only You can keep.
>
> Father-God, forgive me for praying I am not a hopeless liar
> who will burn for these thousands I cannot count, so many,
> for having given only water that cannot quench their bodies' agony.
>
> Father-God, forgive me the justice turned to curdled mockery
> when I bring them with me into the Cathedral itself.
>
> For I have watched the ladies of the country
> I shall never see again glare at me as though
> I'd brought wildcats into the church, leave in rustling fury,
> then heard my loves purr, squall, lap the Host
> upon their tongues like milk, nourishment to serve.
>
> 3: The Names, 1888
>
> So today they call me Saint.
> Once, in the port of Cartagena,
> on the plantations of the nobles,
> they called me Satan, wished me
> dragged to the stake and garrot.
>
> The slave who cleaned up after me,
> cleaned me dry before my death,
> called me an old fool for thinking
> I could free anyone, save anyone
> when I could not save myself.
>
> I named myself when first I came there:
> Slave of the Slaves, their subject
> embracing torments, smells
> that rose to Heaven with my soul,
> if indeed this is Heaven.
>
> My body has passed beyond corruption,
> and so have theirs whose souls I fought to save,
> and yet what have I changed?
>
> What have I done but what I promised?--
> to labor and not count the cost, nor
> seek reward but in the doing of Your will.
> My children labor yet, lashed, tormented
> and tormentor alike, all slaves, tied to a cross:
> salvific, bloody, Yours, mine, ours.
>
> KTW/2-14-00, rev. 6-24-04
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton  Ab  T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320

There are places named for
other places, ones where
a word survives whatever happened

which it once referred to.  And there are
names for the places water comes and touches.
But nothing for the whole.

                Bill Manhire