White House Tours

In the District, light bewitches,

how it switches on   

and switches off the issues,

dilemma of American town,

its broken fields of black and white.

I with pencil, you with lenses

record phenomena with kindred senses:

slave dwelling quarters, tenants' trace,

honeymoon-discarded coils of lace.

The black box makes distress a shadow play,

composing order from a disarray:

a thorny rose of vine on carmine brick,

rust, pink stucco, blood-sausage marble,

venereal opening in salmon wall.

Down empty streets run line and blaze,

the shapes of doors, trees' tracing ways

escape from blighted palaces.

Yet shops and shots are cleared of folk,

still lives free of commerce,

patterns pure and unpeopled.

As you seek the sequence,

I scan to trim the tale with human face -

collecting urban jetsam, tribal traits.

Down church's gated alley, this fable's lumination:

For glimpse of Calvary, you cock your arm and head

right through the bars,

quite pinioned on the fence, the cross:

"What I won't do for a shot!"

Beware!  So hung -- one of two thieves –

your escort is your sole salvation.

At this moment passes by on the sidewalk

the lord's very angel, a solemn matron lady,

great mother of African Americans

in their unique Christianity,

gowned and winged and haloed,

her hat of fur this bright and chilly day.

This chapel's ghost is she,

departed from sanctuary

when children slowly died

some time before the Reverend King,

now here she haunts to mourn and pray.

She clasps her hands as if to sing.

She shows no interest in our task, our pose:

you twist in crucifixion's artful throes,

genuflecting to your image, while backing you

I face her to speak, and smile –

your soul's protector and spokesperson.

She greets us and begs our pardon

but do we know when service is?

(Though we are miles from home,

and white, and clearly strangers to the place,

she thinks we'd know the time to hear the vespers!

Her cordial heart draws in her congregation.)

To help her, I look to the door

and read for her the holy hour

long time from now  – too long to wait –

yet thanked for that with smile and grace.

She turns away to find the path to glory

from where she's lost in time and space.

You rise with me to watch her go,

the spent camera a forgotten offering.

She waves her white glove once,

and drawing down her veil

crosses o'er the street like Jordan

rising in the chariot swung low for wounded ones,

bound for where the disjunct worlds are healed.

The lid closes over afternoon's deep connection.

In late slants of light on Lafayette Park

the fool and hero citizens speak their mind,

while around them in monumental shadows

and under them at the roots of the land

sleep fallen bright and dim Americans

dark stripes and shades on earth.