A Be'ats poem: NOLA me tangere

Submitted by John Bell on February 2, 2007 - 5:45pm.

We seven or eight from the EDS community are back from New Orleans and agree that the trip was a profound experience, though we are all still digesting the experience.

I know that Chris Wendell here at EDS asked that we share some thoughts with the Beatitudes Society.

- John Bell, member of the Episcopal Divinity School chapter of The Beatitudes Society.

NOLA me tangere

No signs hang on the people of the seventh ward, (yes, seventh),
There are almost no people - just aura.
And besides, the lepers were herded together, (as pre-Katrina),
Are now diaspora-ed.

The signs are on the houses - Xs, and I daresay there was love,
Love especially from the Cajun navy,
(They were their neighbors' keepers.)
Where are the Os? Gone with the gravy?

The signs are on the houses - but unlike other glyphs -
We want to forget their translation.
"In this corner, the counter of bodies;
In that corner, the count's revelation."

The signs do not say "touch me"
But some imagine they do.
And they touch and are touched.
And the result is as a Titian roux.

John Bell
Cambridge, MA (back from New Orleans)
January 29, 2007

Notes: NOLA is the often-used short-hand acronym for New Orleans, Louisiana. "Noli me tangere," the reference to the conceit of the poem, means literally "let me be touched by no one" in Latin. These were the words on signs around the necks of some lepers warning others against contagion. The words are also the words said by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she saw him after his death. They became the words by which a painting by Titian is known. That painting is described on the National Gallery website with these words: "Christ appears to the Magdalena after the Resurrection to comfort her. At first she thinks he is a gardener; when she recognises him he tells her not to touch him - 'noli me tangere' (let no one touch me) - as told in the Gospels (John 20: 14-18). Elsewhere, the Bible records that Christ will soon ascend to heaven and send the Holy Spirit down to his followers: he does not want them to cling to his physical presence." Click here and here.

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