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learn
    A brave and startling truth.
    And when we come to it
    To the day of peacemaking
    When we release our fingers
    From fists of hostility
    When we come to it
    When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
    And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
    When battlefields and coliseum
    No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
    Up with the bruised and bloody grass
    To lay them in identical plots in foreign soil
    When the rapacious storming of the churches
    The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
    When the pennants are waving gaily
    When the banners of the world tremble
    Stoutly in a good, clean breeze
    When we come to it
    When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
    And our children can dress their dolls in flags of truce
    When land mines of death have been removed
    And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
    When religious ritual is not perfumed
    By the incense of burning flesh
    And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
    By nightmares of sexual abuse
    When we come to it
    Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
    With their stones set in mysterious perfection
    Nor the Gardens of Babylon
    Hanging as eternal beauty
    In our collective memory
    Not the Grand Canyon
    Kindled into delicious color
    By Western sunsets
    Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
    Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
    Stretching to the Rising Sun
    Neither Father Amazon nor Mother
    Mississippi
    who, without favor,
    Nurtures all creatures in their depths and on their shores
    These are not the only wonders of the world
    When we come to it
    We, this people, on this minuscule globe
    Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger
    Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
    We, this people, on this mote of matter
    In whose mouths abide cankerous words
    Which challenge our very existence
    Yet out of those same mouths
    Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness
    That the heart falters in its labor
    And the body is quieted into awe
    We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
    Whose hands can strike with such abandon
    That, in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
    Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,
    irresistible tenderness,
    That the haughty neck is happy to bow
    And the proud back is glad to bend
    Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
    We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
    When we come to it
    We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
    Created on this earth, of this earth
    Have the power to fashion for this earth
    A climate where every man and every woman
    Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
    Without crippling fear
    When we come to it
    We must confess that we are the possible
    We are the miraculous, we are the true wonder of this world
    That is when, and only when,
    We come to it.

CONTINUE

O N THE OCCASION OF O PRAH W INFREY’S
FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY
    Dear Oprah,
    On the day of your birth
    The Creator filled countless storehouses and stockings
    With rich ointments
    Luscious tapestries
    And antique coins of incredible value
    Jewels worthy of a queen’s dowry
    They were set aside for your use
    Alone
    Armed with faith and hope
    And without knowing of the wealth which awaited
    You broke through dense walls
    Of poverty
    And loosed the chains of ignorance which threatened to cripple you so that you could walk
    A free woman
    Into a world which needed you
    My wish for you
    Is that you continue
    Continue
    To be who and how you are
    To astonish a mean world
    With your acts of kindness
    Continue
    To allow humor to lighten the burden
    Of your tender heart
    Continue
    In a society dark with cruelty
    To let the people hear the grandeur
    Of God in the peals of your laughter
    Continue
    To let your eloquence
    Elevate the people to heights
    They had only imagined
    Continue
    To remind the people that
    Each is as good as the other
    And that no one is beneath
    Nor above you
    Continue
    To remember your own young years
    And look with favor upon the lost
    And the least and