Suddenly my suburb is surrounded by churches
In every direction. We are hemmed in by Love
Like Sunday, Sunday every day of the week.
The modern steeples, coppery and chic
The formstone walls, the abstract garish glass
Draw to their their side the sabbath-enamelled cars.
Formerly we were just a collection of medium-priced
Houses on a middleclass prairie.
Now we are a community in Christ.
The crosses stand like jet-planes in the blue,
Warding off terror,
And one neat synagogue with a chrome menorah
Completes the magic circle God hath wrought.
The circles of churches is now encircled
By a ring of missiles with atomic heads.
We are in a little deeper than we thought,
Stonehenge deep, round as Wagnerian ring,
And no death of the gods is yet in sight,
And no death even of the circling Reds.
Too late to pray for a real death of the gods,
gods of the red, gods of the black,
For there is only encirclement,
Circles of love, circles of hate,
Guarded by God the ghettoes of the free.
Karl Shapiro
(Picture: Stained glass window - The mysterious garden, Odilon Redon)
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