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| Our Lady of Czestochowa: An image very similar to that above hung in a side altar of my parish church at the corner of East 142nd and Harvard during the period when the neighborhood experienced blockbusting and ensuing white flight. The skin tones on the actual image displayed in the church were notably darker than what appears here. |
Woman of the Poles, what accident
Has made you black and brought you here?
By burning were you marred
By burning were you marred
Or were you carved in some dark wood
By an artist long ago who wished to say your Son
The origin of all the sylvan tones
Could find His image done as fittingly
In mahogany or teak as pine?
Gilded and encrusted so with jewels
Attracting every eye, you speak a message
That from pulpits no one hears.
Black builders of this house
When workers fixed you thus upon the wall
Gathered ‘round and marveled that now
Beneath you they would kneel
Who ignore you just outside.
Across a world mere stones
Proscribe your Son from schools.
But steel and lead can no more
Force Him out than force Him in
For here the ways are barred by hearts.
How many times from your dark arms
Has He stepped down, and books in hand,
Been told there is no room?
To the dark stranger, standing at the church door,
How long to them shall it remain unknown
Within our church above our altar hangs
God’s image in their own?
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