The Days You Bring
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About this ebook
Harold J. Recinos
Harold J. Recinos is professor of church and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Among his publications are Good News from the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church (2006), Wading through Many Voices: Toward a Theology of Public Conversation (editor, 2011), Where the Sidewalks Meet (2022), The Days You Bring (2022) and The Looking Glass: Far and Near (2023). He completed his PhD with honors in cultural anthropology in 1993 from the American University in Washington, DC. Since the mid-1980s, Recinos has worked with the Salvadoran refugee community and with marginal communities in El Salvador on issues of human rights.
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The Days You Bring - Harold J. Recinos
Barrio
I never tire of the city
with scented wind that
sobs some nights. I love
to see the people on her
sidewalks when the moon
shines. I stop to learn the
name of the winos sleeping
church steps beneath God’s
heaven. I am in love with
those rare moments when
butterflies dance their way
across the busy streets to
tell me life is not dark and
cold.
Beloved
this morning there was scarcely
a sound on the streets, the clouds
floated over the rooftops dropping
a little rain and I could see almost
to the East River. I walked down
the sidewalk passing the building
where w. h. Auden lived that now
sits beside a Pizza Shop popular with
the junkies and winos who never tire
of sitting in the cold light of Thompkins
Square Park. on the way to the river,
tender memories came to me, I waved
to the Brazilian Pentecostal preacher
sweeping the sidewalk in front of his
storefront church and smiled at the sight
of a rather large man walking with his
Chihuahua on a long leach as pigeons
flew above the dog’s head. I thought
about the stuff we live with everyday
on the Alphabet streets, the grocery
store owners who left their enchanted
island many years ago and still had a
look in their eyes of not getting what
they really wanted. I wondered how
many of us in this neighborhood sat
down in the odd hours of dark nights
to write letters to America about being
beloved in a country that says it has
too little to give?
The Women
the women who arrived
two months ago are in the
corner grocery store getting
a few things for an evening
meal with children who have
already picked up lots of new
world English. they are at the
counter paying Mr. Perez who
owns the bodega with money that
trembles in their hands like it
was something to fear. the teen
stocking shelves with Goya beans
on one of the aisles has no idea
what it was like in the faraway
places these women fled, why
the woman dressed in black
weeps unannounced when she sees
green legal tender with the words
in God We Trust that paid for death
to come prematurely to a husband
running away from soldiers. they
make money cleaning private homes
that never ask them for documents,
makes them stand up against a wall,
and threatens them with jail time. yet,
the little cash they earn causes them
to shiver, weep, and sometimes pray
for it to buy enough food and cover
the week’s rent so they can keep
a roof over children’s heads in a
world demanding their lives.
River Jordan
I weep for the men, women and
children murdered in harsh time,
no longer smelling the sweetness
of each fleeting day, lost forever
in a darkness that will never taste
love, removed from the world by
the devils who delightfully lock
gas chamber doors and mocked
by the malignant fools who
spend their time imagining the
triumph of injustice. I weep for
a society that repeatedly elects
lies shown in churches, schools,
courts, government and ordinary
streets with torrential contempt
for truth and flattery for those who
choke the witnesses against hate
and deceit to death. I weep for the
thin light of democracy that is stuffed
with the same bullshit the latest version
of sanitized history books use in schools
to refute the horrors of terrorized and slain
people. I weep without any tears left for
America’s denial of memory and for the
day crucified people will at last see God’s
messenger of mercy cover the world full of
hate with a blanket of flowers!
Friends
my friends enjoy windy nights
on city park benches nodding
to the faint sound of children
in their last half-hour of play.
they spend hours talking about
the girl without parents, brothers
lost in wars, mangoes that fell
at the oddest hours and dreams
touched only by God. my friends
laugh about plastic slip covered
furniture, doors that open to dark
spaces, the beauty of dark-skinned
selves and the idea of a civilized
whiteness. my friends are sleeping
in the subways, the flop houses, the
park, the bus stations, the tenement
roofs and stairwells bemoaning the
fascist use of race, the contempt for
Spanish and the power of Providence
imagined by murder, rape and theft
of land. my friends drink on the stoop
saying life is not a long misery in
the dark, the different, the exile, the
hated, the angry and the non-English
speaking siblings of Christ.
Silence
we talked, painted messages on
walls and marched to keep days
beautiful for our children sold on
the idea the world is worth it. we
gathered in winter apartments
beside kitchen stoves warming
ourselves with stories that have
burned in us. we recalled the tired
backs of mothers trying to carry us
to the promised land, wondering
why the Lord no longer lingers
with the Spanglish people in the
slums and tired of seeing sons and
daughters treated like less. we sat
on the stoop saying all the things
not allowed in school, refusing to
hold our tongues, denouncing with
words taken from two languages the
gods of society who allow children
to hold guns instead of books. we
confessed that in a nation with so
much police brutality and too many
churches singing to a God who does
not see the wretched on earth, no one
cares about Oscar Romero or Martin
Luther King, and billionaires are adored
on the covers of magazines.
Tiny Hat
I once saw an old man with
a fiddle in the alley behind
Westchester Avenue in the
company of the cutest tiny
dressed monkey the kids at
their windows had ever seen.
it danced, tumbled, clapped
and gracefully took off its hat
then climbed the fire escapes
with a little bowl to collect
audience coins and even a few
green bills. after many years,
I had forgotten how beautiful
was the sound of laughter in
the unfrequented alley where
poor children play.
Love
love in a time of illness
opens the gates, breaks
down the walls, sells all
hate, hushes crying and
brings dreams alive with
a simple kiss. in these times,
love enfolds us, has us cling
to each other on earth with
thirsty lips, stirs the finite