Pan de Vida

by Jeffrey Essmann | November 15, 2023 1:00 am

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This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by James Green.

[Lines written after processing with a congregation of Tzutihil
along a mountain road from Capilla Finca Aldea Chacaya
to Inglesia de Santiago, Guatemala, on the Feast of Corpus Christi.]

Pan de Vida

El pan de vida, cuerpo del Senor.
A voice begins the Corpus Christi prayer.
Poder es servir, Dios es amor.

Marimbas fill the air. A corridor
of campesinos forms as elders bear
el pan de vida, cuerpo del Senor.

Remembering sons and fathers lost in war,
in footsteps of new martyrs they declare
poder es servir, Dios es amor.

Along the way abuelas wave from open doors.
They hold nietas high to better see and share
el pan de vida, cuerpo del Senor.

Las ninas dance, guitars resound in one accord.
They bear the Host to Santiago where
Poder es servir, Dios es amor.

The hymn will never be the same, not as before,
not as the echo of their Corpus Christi prayer:
El pan de vida, cuerpo del Senor,
poder es servir, Dios es amor.

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James Green has published five chapbooks of poetry, one of which, Long Journey Home, was winner of the 2019 Charles Dickson Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society, and his most recent, Ode to El Camino de Santiago and Other Poems of Journey, was published last year by Wipf & Stock. His individual poems have appeared in literary magazines in Ireland, the UK, and the U.S. Formerly a university professor and administrator, he is now retired and resides in Muncie, Indiana. To learn more about James and his poetry, visit his website at www.jamesgreenpoetry.net.

Source URL: https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2023/11/pan-de-vida/

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