ENCOUNTER IN MANHATTAN

Before

Our paths crossed in Central Park

one cold evening in Lent.

His hug was anxious and as tight as angina,

his dark eyes scanning my face

fearful of all available answers –

hands strong – but moist –

worried that he’d got it wrong

knowing three weeks and he’d be dead

not via the sterile needle as for Timothy McVeigh –

early morning clean-draped gurney

watched-by-victims’-relatives-on-camera-in-the-ceiling stuff  –

but via crucis: hanging hammering nail-stabbing

dehydrating shoulder-dislocating

top-of-the-hill-watched-by-crowds stuff

‘Surely not in the U.S.!’ he said.

‘Oh yes!’ I said, reminding him

of the fearful nature of reality.

He had resisted, he told me,

alone in the desert

the temptation to prove –

jump from a pinnacle, turn stones to bread:

maybe a mistake not to have done so.

Now he wondered if

his feeding of thousands, his raising of the dead,

his cleansing of lepers, his mud-pasting blind eyes,

his chasing demons from the mad,

his stopping an issue of female blood

were simply fantastic tricks – him as secular magician –

like those of soothsayers who competed with Moses

in Pharaoh’s court, seeking to convince him

he need not let our people go.

‘How can I be sure this path is right?’

he asked, more of himself, of the darkness, of the trees,

of the night than of me. ‘You can’t.’ I said,

‘Yours is a path of faith and that’s the risk:

there’s no proof. You can only wait

and see how things work out.’

‘But I’ll be dead!’

He knew and I knew that it was true.

‘What can I do to help?’ I asked,

(always a good question I found

to put to patients in my practice facing

the conquering cavalry of cancer or loss of breath).

‘Pray for me,’ he said,

‘that I’ll be strong enough

to see it through.’

‘I will.’ I said.

‘So much depends on you.’

After

Each Easter Day

I stand behind the battlements

of Belvedere Castle in Central Park

to watch the sun rise,

to watch it rise across the lake

to make the best

of whatever weather greets it – clear sky

or remnant winter clouds,

the touch of rain, even snow.

On Friday riots of the lost

rent Wall Street’s curtain

from the top:

the mayhem of financial ruin

was everywhere – 

tear gas, fire, troops and bullets –

and one especially hideous execution

performed by today’s authorities

high up for all to see.

.

It was him.

I picked him by his eyes;

he looked cold.

 ‘Was it as bad as you feared?’ I asked.

‘Worse,’ he said. ‘Thousands died.’

I passed him coffee, bagels, lox –

touched his hands

and saw where nails were torn

from four fingers.

Looking towards the lake, he shivered.

‘I could not save them,’ he said.

‘Here, have this rug,’ I said

cladding his shoulders  –

he looked like a man freed from

a concentration camp –

but it did the job. 

‘You’ll need time to find your inner warmth  –

and then?’ I asked.

‘We can only wait and see how things turn out,’

he smiled, replaying without irony

what I’d said to him three weeks before

when our paths crossed one evening in Lent.

 ‘And you?’ he asked, touching the crease of my face

where my tears usually run.

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