Phoenix

"For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?"
Gibran- "The Prophet"


We do not have a way with words-
the Americans, we hide it all inside until
it sometimes explodes-
Once we had such a man,
Walt Whitman,
who wept for Lincoln in effulgent
language so sublime it stunned
everyone to silence-
Blood ran in our country then,
blood we covered over with shopping malls
and used car lots to conceal
the memory of self-inflicted wounds.
Manhattan was the city Whitman loved-
It will rise from the ashes,
glorious Phoenix spreading its wings
in a triumph of emancipation-


Richard Cummings