Palm Sunday - Poem

National Catholic Reporter, April 27, 2001 by Tomas San Diego

   1

   On Palm Sunday in Holy Week
   i ride the A train uptown to St. John the Divine
   high art gothic looming over lowly Harlem
   where liturgy is divinely rendered by a bishop
   wearing a purple zucchetto
   and pita bread replaces the wafer
   falling crumbs to the cold
   concrete floor of the grand cathedral
   i stoop to pick up the pale fragments
   of His broken body offered as sacrifice
   of praise and thanksgiving for us careless
   caretakers of the Holy Mystery

   2

   In Manhattan as hard rain falls at midnight
   lady artist, Jesse, poet David Henderson
   and i break bread and drink wine together
   talking books, cinema, politics and personalities
   like Cornel West selling out to Harvard's black elite
   In ecstatic conversation we celebrate the word
   made flesh on Sunday nite in Mekka on Avenue A

--Tomas San Diego