Steven Young Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

Werner Chapel

god is 
what I don't know
high Gothic arches pierce the sky
to commemorate a body 
washed ashore on the bank of the Rhine
that inspired a wave of pogroms in 1287
a body, that became a saint
a body, that became a pilgrimage 
a body, that became an apology in 1996
for 
       "...the curse that we wrongly 
       put on the name of the Jew...
       because we didn't know what
       we were doing."  *

so, you can know god
but not know what you are doing
for fifteen hundred years

* John XXIII: Penitential Prayer "We Recognize..." Spoken June 3, 1963 at Vatican II

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