Saint John #2

A poem

O Foghorn City,
It pains me to see that the melancholy
Reciprium I’d once prized in you
Has been as fleeting as it was within me,
And having sprinted from my bitter solipsism,
Emerging like a grotesque, slimy infant,
Now I see you in fullest colour:
A horrid gray.

O Vestige of the past and of the future,
Of Protestants and Catholics divided to natural conclusion
You can’t outpace with change your own substance, I think
As I pass through streets noticing the superficial changes:
A fresh coat on an old house on Orange Street,
New pavement on Sydney, a demolition lot
I’d seen before, now from a new angle;
Raze it, raze it, O Saint John, and intercede for us.

O Home of the Aryans no Aryan dares to remember,
Your blood has run thin and frail, such
That even the hopes of darker men spill over into my spirit,
A spark, flickering, quickly extinguished
By the overflowing Reversing Falls;
And my eyes are again left to swim
Over sidewalks scattered with shed skins, agitated statues,
Women hardly compelling enough to rape.

Yet this pilgrimage has lasted a day and a night;
Through places I’ve never known, I’ve travelled
To reach this shrine of identity,
This place where I will return again and again;
Is it possible that I may never see the rest?
That all loves and charities will find their apex here,
And the Lord will win, in this place I will one day lose?

I wonder, as the beckoning of some limp hand
A stranger croaking from his deathbed
Leads me back to my carriage, to move;
And I will drive over gray and saltless roads
To meet the old parish priest in the confessional
At Holy Family Church, and make my most pitiful confession,
Here in this destitute city: crimeless,
Weatherless, prideless, priceless, 
Saint John.