Genesis 11:1 - 9 )

After my week here,
(I hope there aren’t many more)
Getting rest and new pills
And bantering with my psychiatrist,
One story among many stays with me.

On the top floor after supper,
I gazed out a window
At the city I’ve known all my life.
A stranger appeared and said hello,
About my own age, I’d say,
A vision, I think now, though I took
Him for real while we spoke.
“Reassuring sight,” I said, “sturdy sky-reachers
Lustrous at dusk, outshining the stars.”
“They pleased me once, too,” he said,

Keeping a few feet from me
And other patients in the lounge.
He looked like a prosperous man
Even in hospital dress.
“I think differently now,” he went on.
He asked how I made my living.
“Construction business,” I said.
“I’d have done better if the elites
Hadn’t stood in my way.
I pushed on, though, turned out fairly well.”

I asked him the same.
Architect, he said. He’d designed
A few of the towers around us.
“You’ve worked hard,” I told him – and envied his luck.
“Many love the city – it brings out our best.”
“If we could draw people together, I once thought,” the stranger said,
“Provide good living spaces, we’d know each other
And overcome the differences that injure us.
I wanted us to be one – a light for the world.
But I failed and healed no wounds.
Strife goes on. Minds shaken, ashen souls.
I feel lost myself if I walk through the streets
At night, imagining loneliness, poverty, crime, disease.
Has the city we built become an enemy to man?”
“Not for the ones who do what’s expected,” I said.

“I hear a pride of lions accusing,” he went on, “that people
Like me turned the city into Babel – a great tower that soars
To the sky: the Lord will scatter us again,
They say, so we don’t become as great as He.”
“False parallel,” I said to keep dumb fears
Away from my own soul.

Few at the top think his way,
But odd things happen to brains under stress.
“Babel was a pagan temple,” I said,
“A shrine we made to ourselves,
Which God, if He exists, will naturally shut down.
Our towers have a useful purpose,
Places for us to live in and work.
I foresee you’ll pass through this morass refreshed.
And go back to your calling.”

It was getting late. Lights in
Apartment blocks flickered out,
Folks settling down for the night.
“I have new ideas,” he said, “about our troubles
And my share in creating them.
I wondered what God was doing.”

“Raising a hand to smash us, you think?”

He brushed my question aside.
“It’s taken me months, but recovery is near.
Someone gave me a hint that lessened my dread.”
He moved, whether closer or farther away I couldn’t tell.

“Centuries ago God himself broke Babel’s spell
When He prayed that all who trusted Him would be one
As He and the Father are one. A greater unity than
The one I imagined – and lost.”

“That’s his work, if you like.” I said. “Ours is to build.
We don’t give that up.”

“He expects more from us than glass and steel...
To help him make us one.”
“Why bother?” I asked, “if he’ll crush us anyway?”

He didn’t like my questions.

“He wants us to serve the truth,” he said,
“Which gleams with its own light.”
I asked what he’d do to help the light.
“Talk to you ,” he said, “and others.”
“And pray, too, I suppose, ” I said, mocking,
For I haven’t cared much since my teens
For stories of the supernatural or those who purvey them.

I saw that he frowned; I went along with his drift.
“Yes, we’re bad,” I said. “Let Him crush us and end the pain.”
He tried to correct me. “Not the point,” he said.
“For the sake of the One Who died and still lives,
He hears the prayers of the wounded who trust Him.
He knows we’re troubled, including you and me,
Poor, inept, we need his help,
as our presence here testifies.
Our buildings are nothing to Him.”

“Rubbish!” I protested, crossing the bounds of polite talk.
My visitor seemed to fade. “No one ever said I was inept.
I had plenty to start with and made more. I’ll never be in want.”
“Next to His riches,” he said, “we’re all poor. Don’t lose your chance.”

He left with his dreams and his money
And better position than I’ll ever see.
I assumed we’d meet again, at the elevator, say,
On the day he checked out, when he’d tell me
He’d give it another try – a job in the East End.
“Good show,” I’d say, and we’d shake hands heartily.
But you can’t shake the hand of a daydream,
A conclusion that you and my doctor will readily endorse,
So I say nothing and keep my eye out,
As if my visitor were no specter and would explain
quite soon what he meant by my chance.