|
|
|
LOWER BROADWAY
On lower Broadway, near the fallen temple,
Fountains of light leapt into the porous sky,
Like souls streaming toward Heaven's implacable judgment.
An angel, freshly alighting from the other world,
Settled in the lee beneath a brooding façade,
His face set stiff against the curling, sidelong wind.
Eyes that once held the beatific vision now squinted
At the smolder of crumbling plaster and ruined dreams.
What gods are these, I heard him ask,
Who demand such a sacrifice?
There are many deities on lower Broadway,
Graceless gods discernable in the movement of currency
and the accretion of power.
Yet even these draw life from the True God,
Who suffers in His people and dwells with them
In hearths of flesh and rooms of brass.
It is He who lurks in the vortical cult;
It is He who is the enemy of sullen men.
There are those who refuse to receive our report.
They detect no greater significance
In the crashing of steel and mortar on bone.
They will not concede to history.
They cannot imagine that outside the walls
A barbarian sleeps, dreaming of warm rooms and meat and
Machines that can fly.
|
Author's Note: "Lower
Broadway" was written in the welter of sadness and anger that
immediately followed the events of September 11, 2001. I
live two hours
from Manhattan, and after a decent interval I felt drawn to make
a pilgrimage to the site of such terrible suffering. New York City has
always had a profound spiritual effect on me. I think it has to do with
the concentration of so many souls, and the barely disguised contest
between light and darkness that is being waged behind every doorway and
window, indeed behind every impassive face one encounters on the
street. Anyway, I wanted to go to Ground Zero to encounter the Lord's
consolation, to prove to myself that He would be present in what I had
come to see as a modern Golgotha. He was
indeed there, as I knew He would be. In fact, I felt His grace
lying
like a gentle, healing blanket over the entire awful scene. |
|
BOSTON COMMON 1965
Flat feet beat the pavement -
Gospel feet, saved feet -
Propelled by stubby legs,
Themselves compelled by
The Great Commission.
Purposeful strides on a summer afternoon,
Boy-heart pumping,
A heart for the lost.
Accordian straps slap in rhythmic
Dialogue with the
Tick, tick, tick of high heels.
The big hand holding mine is moist with sweat.
A baptism of sweet certainty.
Blessed assurance
Suddenly, there is a stumble
And our wooden crate
Splinters against a curb.
His book skitters across the sidewalk,
Its onionskin pages fluttering like wings,
As when a dove hovers over water.
He stoops to pick up the book
Before resetting his smile
And resuming the azimuth of his intent.
All the crates in all the world may break, he says,
But no harm will come to this book.
He will preach standing on the ground today;
The earth itself is a broken pulpit.
Great is Thy faithfulness.
|
Author's Note: My
father, a Baptist minister, used to do street evangelism on Boston
Common. My mother would bring an accordion and play some songs,
and
then my dad would step onto a soapbox (really, a soapbox!) and preach
as if he were addressing a throng. My job was to scurry around handing
out little Gospel tracts. My dad was the truest Christian I have ever
known. Though terribly misguided (and deeply anti-Catholic), he had a
love of Jesus Christ that I live to merely approximate. He died in
1979, and so is a Catholic now, as I am. I look forward to meeting him
again on a street corner in the Heavenly City, where he'll have no need
for a soapbox.
|
|
| Mark Gordon is a father, husband, businessman and poet in Westerly, RI. Among other ventures, he is the principal of Three Bean Books,
a Catholic publishing company, and host of Rejoice in Hope, a
nationally syndicated Catholic radio program. The son of a Baptist
minister, Mark was reconciledwith the Catholic Church in 1997. |
|
Revised November 18, 2004
|
|
