To live free.

To live.

To be educated well enough to take up work. To raise a family.  Buy a house. Pay taxes. Vote without being threatened.  

Watch your son walk out without your blood pressure shooting up. 

 

I love you we call out to the black princes of our hearts when they walk out:

begging them in code to take maximum care when they are in transit. And even when they think they are safe. 

 

Ordinary freedoms. The extraordinary freedoms of a democracy.

 

 

*****************

 

Kyrie  (Lord, (have mercy))

Tomas Tranströmer, 1931-2015, Swedish

Translated by Robert Bly

 

 

At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark.
A feeling of masses of people pushing blindly
through the streets, excitedly, toward some miracle,
while I remain here and no one sees me.

 

 

It is like the child who falls asleep in terror
listening to the heavy thumps of his heart.
For a long, long time till morning puts his light in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.

 

 

 

31st and Girard Avenues, Philadelphia.  Mural Arts Program 

Two of these four shot dead before they had reached the prime of their lives.   All of blessed memory.