2002 / june / 18
A Poem of Longing
The Common Wound
Sent to me by Susan. Enjoy.
An Interfaith Prayer Poem
The Common Wound: 1
We have come so far,
yet we have so far to go,
before we will see the road
that brought us here,
with true eyes and open hearts.
We cannot be whole until everything is owned.
We can keep the book of our journey,
on a dusty shelf, in a back room,
or, . . .
we can liberate ourselves,
and most of all,
the children.
We must look starkly
in the face of our own darkness.
Bring the book of our days,
into the morning light,
approach it as you would a tender wound.
Approach these wounds of our history, gently,
as if coming upon sacred pools of wonder.
Look back in silence and see freshly:
See the Christian thrown to the lions,
for following the prophet of Nazareth.
See the woman of Salem--
who would not bow down before the image of Christ--
but only to the moon and to the stones--
who, through the magic of herb and incantation,
suffered a similar fate as He.
See the day when the skin of a Huron man
would fetch half a dollar,
and see the night at Sand Creek,
when men in blue rode in on Black Kettle's camp,
the dying of babies still in the womb,
never to see the light of day.
See the Black man,
hunched over, picking cotton,
the tell-tale signs of the bull whip upon his back,
only to keep going,
only to keep going,
for his dreams of Africa.
See the Irish wandering across a soggy landscape,
burned from their homes,
tongues stained green with the grass of hunger;
the sacred earth withholding her harvest.
We have come so far, and yet we have so far to go.
The Common Wound: 2
Close the book of our days for now,
and return it to rest.
Look into the future,
the book of days we have yet to write,
for the Golden Age is ahead, not behind.
See the Indian, the Buddhist, the Sufi, the Hindu,
the Jew, the Muslim, the Pagan Witch, the Protestant, the Druid, and the Catholic,
joining hands and hearts,. . .
paying homage to the sacred trees. . .
converging upon a site. . .
coming together in peace. . .
anointing one another with prayer.
See a rain of a thousand days,
washing away the blood and the hate
from different lands,
cleansing,
cleansing,
cleansing Gaza Strip and Northern Ireland,
Bosnia and Vietnam,
south central L.A. and Baghdad,
Buchenwald and Hiroshima,
cleansing Tiananmen Square,
and Wounded Knee.
I long for the days when we will see
all the earth as our Holy Land,
all peoples as the Chosen Ones.
We have come so far,
we have so far to go.
from Building Fences In High Wind:
Poems of Longing
(an unpublished collection)
by Frank MacEowen (c) 2002
author of The Mist-Filled Path:
Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, & Seekers
www.celticwisdom.org
