damien, saint of molokai
By Sister Lou Ella Hickman, IWBS - Corpus Christi, Texas, USA - 18 August 2014
yours was a strange baptism --
water washing feet
the sign you now belonged
it was righteousness not charity that drove you
like a tropical storm over dots of land
to carpenter out your days with them . . .
yours was the lesson we all must learn:
ravaged flesh has no need of charity
save only the humanity pronounced in we