Wilmer Mills
"A homeless woman sleeps outside the door.
She smells of urine so the customers Who eat brioche and talk about the poor Step wide of her in winter and in summer.
But she has noticed them in their retreat
Of tea and café latte ambiance."
This is a brief part of a fine polemic poem in the December First Things.
First Things is often portrayed as an extremist conservative magazine -- a very unfair assessment. Yes, First Things is a magazine of faith (tending to Catholic but with Jewish and Protestant writers), but it is faith expressed with intellectual rigour and care.
First Things is a good place for poetry and its articles reflect a genuine concern for people here and now.
As the poem suggests, from an expressly Christian perspective, people matter more than ideas about people -- it's better to care for a poor person than to talk about "the poor".
2 comments:
I am a passsionate poetry lover because I write and am published so to see this topic defined and refined gives me inspiration to compose something in reflection.
Recently, I saw a Senior man bending down below the Soda machines in front of Walmart searching for change, a sign of the times.
Sad -- and then you wonder if giving him the money would be to offer insult???
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