Tainted waters
Hurled up by a hurricane
Over your untended walls,
River Queen, Big Easy, harlot of the Gulf,
Spread so wide along the swamps, riches like
Men flowing up you, through you,
Sugar, slaves, coffee, oil and voodoo,
Extracted, sold and purchased for a song,
Your soul, your jazz, the liquid beat, the crazy
Currents, the drowned horizons of the Delta,
Drenching the park and bars of the French Quarter
But those days of Mardi Gras were numbered,
The carnival extravaganza balances on the edge of its
Precipice, and yours especially, that's why all of us U.S.
Came down to you, to dance and wear your beads
To ride your tide of doom, to drink your liquor,
Kiss the skulls and zombies, and go back happy home.
But now it has come: a rage of waters, casino of the sea,
Chaos churning just below the surface, jonah's zone,
That petrol wealth, its global warmth, platforms,
Pipelines, crude and refined, ready to blow,
Houses, cars and boats, hotels and highways
Heaped upon you; your children abandoned to the wind,
Your weak have died, your poor brought down to Hades,
Down to foundations of the world, the roots of mountains,
The bars of death closing in on them,
Seaweed wrapped around their heads,
Filth and trash, guns, rape and hatred;
The dog days of 8.05
Are a history of hell,
At one end Hiroshima,
At the other Katrina
And yet my sister I am here with you, drowned beneath
Those muddy waters, in that bowl of terror, that superdome
Of horror, I am with you. Like you I have borne the sins of
Many, the rage of human waters, but I, I alone entered the abyss
For love; before I entered none could bear to think or look on it,
to know even it existed; I alone have made it known,
Alone have made it the place of truth, the place of hope, of life,
Of peace. I alone was there to meet you when you came,
I alone to greet you when you entered in your despair:
There are so many untold stories of my presence in the superdome,
And there are many more to come. And so now I proclaim that I am
With all those who enter there in imagination and the power
Of love, to learn forgiveness, gift and peace, to change the carnival
Of death to a carnival of pure life, the infinite generosity of my
Father whom I alone have shown: behold I will make all things new,
The abyss of waters, of human rage, become the fountain of absolute
Change, the waters of transformation; if you could gaze at New Orleans,
Gaze at her with the eyes of this conversion she would be built again
More beautiful, more wondrous than can ever be imagined,
Coming out of heaven like a bride
JonahB
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