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We live in the inner city, you do not.
This we must beg of you:
Don't look at us and see only our pain
Don't look at us with pity in your heart
Don't look at us and count your blessings
Because you will see only that which you fear,
that which you project
the inside of you
You will miss the gift of us
You live in relative comfort, we do not
This you must beg of us;
We must not look at you and see only your wealth
We must not look at you with pity in our hearts
We must not look at you and count your blessings
Because we will only see that which we envy
that which we assume you have
which reveals the inside of us, and
we will miss the gift of you.
(originally written for the newsletter while pastor of a small inner city church, November 1994)
©2004 Steve Eulberg
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2 comments:
Thank you, Steve, for posting this still-important, well-presented thought. I am struck by how, with the passage of time, the "inner city" has become many different places in our communal psyche, and by how people of other places, locally and world-wide, could read this poem to themselves and then read it to others as their own --placing the name of their place in the opening lines. So often, in so many places, including today's inner cities, poverty is so proximate with privilege that it seems more a matter of geometry than geography.
Thank you, Steve, for posting this still-important, well-presented thought. I am struck by how, with the passage of time, the "inner city" has become many different places in our communal psyche, and by how people of other places, locally and world-wide, could read this poem to themselves and then read it to others as their own --placing the name of their place in the opening lines. So often, in so many places, including today's inner cities, poverty is so proximate with privilege that it seems more a matter of geometry than geography.
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