So ill my brother grew,
he could not attend the wedding feast
and so I sent Hakeem to search
the hungry, thirsty, and the poor.
Hakeem, whom I had met
last night, who'd journeyed from afar,
went into the early rain to search
for poverty to feed in Grosse Pointe.
Tradition says we share
the wealth and blessings on us bestowed,
parceling out in our finer detail
the general bulky benefits of grace.
All the prophets as one
in opinion and in holy writ
could not conceive the modern day:
in Grosse Pointe no poor were found!
We gave it to Solanus,
good father to himself hand out
to all the poor in all Detroit;
we all need loaves and fishes.
----
notes
I couldn't get near my computer to post this until now.
The wedding was history relived: great pageantry and warfare with weapons of silk and lace, with a great number of distinguished generals and their ladies posing for daguerreotypes. Pomegranate grenades lit the night sky.
2 comments:
It sounds like the best kind of war.
Did you really send food off? The same happened to us. Acres of food left, and distributed.
And your poor brother. This happened to me when I was 13, supposed to be in my sister's wedding, but I lay in bed across the street from the church, in high fever, listening to the church bells.
Poverty in Grosse Pointe. No, I guess not.
There is a tradition in Islam to share the feast with the poor. My family left me with a number of paid-for dinners, so there was a bit of food... not a great deal.
So I thought, why not share?
I think there is poverty everywhere.
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