(For the nine church members in Bible study murdered by a white supremacist)
Streaming blood, the Bibles flap their wings;
Pages become wings, the wings of strong angels.
The Bibles spray blood over the listening Earth
Like words we must read in order to survive.
The blood is like the trail made by dazzling jets:
The Bibles rise like thrones into heralding heaven.
Each Bible is a throne bearing up a wise victim,
A martyr singing of love and mercy
High over horror, the sanctuary defiled
Once again befouled, violated
By a blank secessionist for the country of blankness
Testifying to hate’s supremacy.
The flag of blankness must be honored
By minds that are blank, giddy with pride
In rebellion against the human, despising all color.
They turn the beauty of the city into old sad sin,
Its crime against the Union of love and justice.
Hate’s flag will not be lowered; love’s flag bows in shame.
Blankness must recreate the Confederation of inhumanity—
The sanctuary of color, of life is refuted.
But the church of mercy has changed into a chalice,
A huge chalice filled with the blood of the killed.
The church brims with blood like the wine of kindness,
The redness of blackness, the color of love.
Even in victory, the unloving stay unloving—
Exposed to kindness, he must murder the kind.
But kindness is sustained on the wings of those bibles
And the church is a chalice offered to heaven,
The wine of wisdom, the oblation of souls.
Our Union must be preserved by love and mercy,
By courage and justice, the strength of the kind.
Blood streams from those Bibles
In words we must read:
We are one in diversity, naked Union of hope.
The fragile city is beautiful,
But its sins have been horrible.
It asks to be forgiven,
But it must not sin again.
May rainbow people thrive
In the joyous color of its markets;
May the pastel mild elegance
Of the city survive.
For blankness is loyal only to blankness
And will stay desolate forever
In evil isolation.
The Union of love and mercy, color with color,
Justice with kindness is never alone.
Honor the redness of blackness, honor all color,
Kindness and courage, the song of the strong.
Note: The terrorist Roof, who had no sheltering roof yet could not accept courteous sanctuary, despising all affectionately protective roofs, deceived himself into thinking he was aristocratic white. In fact, he was blank. Blankness is not a color. All color is lovely—black or white shining. Roof believed in the supremacy of gunlove, the sovereignty of ignorance. He expected that his hopeless blankness would grant him pleasingly grim self-justification, the light of the loser. He thought the murderous refutation of otherness is power. With skill-less urgency, he would paint his blankness in blood, giving his blankness the insignia of specious superiority. But his blankness gets blanker and blander as long as he dourly dubiously lives. This is gunlove, the emptiness of solipsistic ignorant sovereignty. Roof is not white. He is blank. Clementa Pinckney and his studiously charming martyred friends, are victorious in establishing a better city of kindness and justice, equally and delicately pastel as the beauty of the older sinning city. The amiably raucous color of its market will live, will thrive even more. Terror over the Earth is unreal murderous rule, fake law , the rage of blankness. Only the blood of love, of courage and kindness, knows how to paint soul, actual art. The reign of dearth and fear over the Earth kills but is idiot illusion. Earth is the loveliest of unmurderous hues, the true spectrum of you, of thou. Relinquish killing animals, grass, people. Unpoison the air.
Acknowledge the gorgeous, ensouling, reviving, healing flag of the rainbow. Race is not real. Life only is valid hope and possible power. The tears of good humans are real. Accept the thrill of otherness, your gifted and giving self, the life of thou and I—joy. Everything that exists in this shattered light is holy. For it has conquered nothingness. Gather the shattered light.
© Stephen Margulies, 2017
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| Four winged angels Stained glass by J. & R. Lamb Studios Wikimedia Commons |
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