A POEM INSIDE OF CATHEDRALS AND GARDENS

 

A POEM INSIDE OF CATHEDRALS AND GARDENS

EXPLORING WORSHIP AND THE NATURE OF GIVING

This is the Cathedral in San Salvador.

This is the notebook providing documentation.

This is the porch garden room in Yakima at 2010 House.

The fountain is running.

Finches try to hold their place on the feeder

while surrounded by the more aggressive, and numerous, juncos.

These are the first notebooks from El Salvador.

These are the unwritten ones.

It is April in Yakima and I am in the garden.

Sitting opposite me is the artist Fernando Llort

who is from La Palma, El Salvador.

I sit facing the facade of the Cathedral designed by Llort

with 2700 handmade ceramic tiles,

Armonia de mi Pueblo,

which hovered over city traffic until 2011

when it was dismantled by the Catholic Church

despite protests from the government.

Alongside the facade, (and here you will have to use

your imagination) is my water bottle Bruce designed

with Llort’s art in a vision, that I carry

to the YMCA in my duffel bag. Note the tile roofs

in red mirroring the red tile roofs and white houses

on the facade of the Cathedral.

A replica of Llort’s Armonia de mi Pueblo

has been replicated in four colors on a tan t-shirt

draped over the garden chair before me.

I imagine the taxis circling the cathedral

in the city while pilgrims and tourists

look up through sun-glared windows

trying to understand the magnificence

before their eyes.

I am in one of these taxis. The year is 2005.

I am riding with Bruce and Ann

Karen is scrunched in with us.

These same white house with red tile roofs

also adorn the wooden crosses

worn around our necks.

When I wear my cross into any Starbucks

in any city in the United States,

someone will look at me, exclaiming,

Oh! A Salvadoran cross.

Fernando Llort is celebrated still--

all across the world where I live and worship.

The cosmology of Fernando Llort can be accessed

and seen, through the following works of art

(although this immense landscape must not be understood

as a country, or landscape): A stole

and altar decorations for the visit to El Salvador

by Pope John Paul II, in 1983.

Llort created “The Fraternal Hug”—abrazo, consisting of three murals and four sculptures; and a giant

wooden cross for Southwerk Cathedral in London, commemorating Romero.

Fernando Llort’s work may also be seen on a commemorative

postage stamp from 2008 (which someday I hope

to have in my possession long enough to attach it

to an envelope containing a letter to a friend).

I will ask for permission to photograph the hand-canceled stamp

on the envelope on the threshold of its journey. Here, I may

also be able to paste the photograph of the stamp

into the Moleskine notebook Bruce and Ann brought me

from their Vatican visit for me as a gift. My initials,

JB have been letter-pressed onto a soft cotton cover.

Today is Tuesday, the second day of the Season of Easter, 2025.

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday,

Papa of the Americas and the poor.

It was first reported that the last audience of Pope Francis

was with the Vice-President of the United States,

to whom he gave a short, but direct, homily on compassion; sources

later confirmed he went out into the basilica, while asking,

Do you think I can manage it?

and blessing thousands.

We will be absorbing the meaning meaning of Pope Francis’ time with us

for the remainder of our time on Earth..

I say this with looking at Fernando Llort sitting across from me.

Fernando Llort lives in every hand-made red ceramic tile.

I say this while looking at him. He lives inside the fabric of the t-shirt.

He lives in my water bottle and he also lives

in all of the peoples art that has been destroyed

and disappeared during the course

of my blessed and abundant lifetime

of writing in notebooks.

Oh! I just saw the green hat brim worn

by one of the campesinos

printed on the facade of the Cathedral.

I couldn’t see that hat from the window of the taxi

that day. Oh! No hay palabras para esta belleza!

Fernando Llort, Pope Francis, destroyed art,

all that refuses to die, right here on the porch.

Here’s one more: Obispo Medardo Gómez,

Teología de la Vida, the Lutheran Church of El Salvador.

Obispo Medardo Gómez, who lived with the martyrs

as much as for them, returned to them earlier this month.

Riding on The Lady of the Lake on Lake Chelan

to Holden Village in Washington State, 20-some years ago,

he sat with me, looking at photographs, saying,

Come to El Salvador, and you’ll write the best poems of your life.

(You laugh, but this was an act of love on his part.)

Here’s my La Palma story.

I had just returned to El Salvador for the third or fourth time,

Bruce and Ann led the Habitat house builds,

and Bishop Gómez said to me, Tomorrow

we’re going on a mission into Nicaragua,

and I want you to accompany us. We’ll be gone

five or six days. We will leave early.

Will you be ready?

While packing my notebook and camera

in my mochila, I left my passport on the bed.

The border guards wouldn’t let me into Nicaragua. The elder woman pastor

with Medardo, pounded her fists on the desk of the border clerk,

Joven! She shouted. Joven! Her fists slamming the counter ,

Abra la frontera para el Obispo y el poeta!

He didn’t do it. Those were long days feeling sorry for myself

when they left me behind at the border.

I didn’t find the women washing clothes

on the rocks of El Rio Lempa until the second day.

I sat with the women who laughed at me, as they listened

to my story and told me some of theirs.

This is how I got to know La Palma, and the birthplace of Fernando Llort.

Medardo changed things for me.

He brought me to the Subversive Cross--

La Cruz Subversiva, the cross that went to prison

with his parishioners who wrote down the sins

of the state on the cross. Doors opened for me

that had been closed for years. Medardo

went to the President of El Salvador and said,

Give me back my cross.

This morning I sit with Fernando Yort on my front porch.

My first notebook from El Salvador rests on the chair

beside the Moleskine notebook Ann and Bruce

brought back from the Vatican for me.

The porch is full. Medardo is here. Ellacuria,

Rutilio Grande, the martyred nuns, Jon Sobrino!--

Medardo knew Romero’s family!

Bruce and Ann, Karen, Helen and Ron,

Mary Campbell,the Habitat teams, vote counters,

Dean Brackley, S.J. all of them. The driver of the boat

and so many hand-made red tiles from many hands.

Ralph Fiennes is here. Someone recalls his words in Conclave:

his greatest fear: certainty. The great enemy of unity, of tolerance.

Let us pray that God will give us a pope who doubts,

who sins and asks for forgiveness, and carries on.

One day I’ll be given the OK to wear this t-shirt in the garden.

The fountain is running. Finches and Juncos eating thistles.

Muy buenos dias, Don Fernando.

For Bruce and Ann

Jim Bodeen

Season of Easter, 2025