"Perhaps The Missing Were Prematurely Raptured" - poetry by Michael F. Nyiri 9/19/01 7:15pm PDT

Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2001
7:15pm pdt
poetry by Michael F. Nyiri

Perhaps The Missing Were Prematurely Raptured

A friend and I, we have talked so much,
Remember simpler times, and in memories, touch
The very fibre of our broken souls,
Even as we commisserate, a lonely darkness grows.
We were remembering the parts of hearts,
Our feelings that lives had not been given starts.
For on the morning of the eleventh, when
A large part of humanity met their worldly end
A little part of our hearts went too
And even a week later this hole's an open wound.

I've been trying to set my heart straight you see
Recover it's heft, get a handle on reality
But I keep reading different stories,
And each succeeding day new worries,
Arrive, about hearing of new souls who soon might be gone
From this Earth by a taste of American bombs.
And I read of the immigrants, who fled other places
With large traces of evil memories
Which time never erases,
And now they see that the terror follows them here
I read of their plight, and my heart sheds new tears.

A woman at work had a sad look on her face
We have to get over this feeling, I said, we have to erase
These horrible grievings for humanity's sorrow
Because we have to get out of our beds tomorrow.
Friends email with sorrow which wracks me, to cry
Again and again, why did they have to die?
But resolution, and stamina, are needed, we know
Because this kind is the world of today, and we grow
Stronger with knowledge, and we didn't know personally
That this kind of grief is the grief of humanity.

My friend told me they can't find many bodies
In the rubble of New York's Once Magnificent Towers.
Only a few hundred out of thousands who are "missing"
Have been found.
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end,
And perhaps the missing were prematurely raptured.
By God's Hand as an early escape from
A coming tribulation on the ground.

Those who seem to be constantly grieving, the sad, the meek,
Shall inherit the world, says the Book.
We shall perhaps soon join our New York friends in Heaven
And will rejoice with Jesus while evil souls cook.
My friend and I talk to console our broken hearts
We mention much, discuss till it hurts, in broken fits and starts.
We do know that the New Yorkers passed to Heaven
And we can take some kind of solace in this knowledge.

Sometimes poetry can be positive, sometimes it seems to intensify harsh feelings. These days, I find I am getting back to business,
because I have to, but at lunch when I read the paper, I cringe.
I read stories of Afghan Americans afraid of what a prolonged American presence in their already war torn and broken country will
mean. I read of misplaced refugees from places like Argentina, who are now reliving memories which they thought they had escaped
when they came to the land of the free.
Worse, I read of people like Coptic Christians being mistaken for Islamic Radicals and being shot by misguided patriotic Americans
I am sorely disturbed.
It is enough that I feel bad. It is enough that every time I glimpse the sorrow of another because they feel the emptiness where their
heart used to be, I feel even sadder.
Yes, I feel angry. But I have no one to fight, and I really don't want to fight.
I never did. I want to reach out an touch humanity's face, and wipe the tear from his eye.
America has been given a taste of what it is like for most of the world. In the paper today, Sept. 19th, I read that New York will
soon join cities like Belfast, Beirut, London, Paris, Jerusalem.
Great cities constantly under the total fear of terror. America always thought that "it can't happen here."
I cry for myself when I remember that I've always feared the day that something like what happened on Sept. 11th would happen.
I now hear we have to fear Sept. 22. Something might have been planned for that date.
Perhaps.
I want to hope that more grief is spared this country. I want to feel that America makes no fatal mistakes.
And I still feel a terrible hole in my heart, which will get much bigger if more innocent lives are lost.
In Afghanistan, the people wouldn't know a good day. They never have had one.
So it would be business as usual for them if we arrive, naively, with weapons.
The zealots who whould do what has been done in America have friends who will keep murdering Americans,
and it will probably get worse.
I prayed to Jesus today, please forgive me for my sins. And deliver me when the time comes.
Because I believe in You. And I trust what good news you have in store for me in Heaven.
If the New Yorkers were prematurely raptured, then I and all the grieving masses will soon be raptured too.
It's a small thought, but hopefully will give comfort.
God Bless you all who read this. Pray for forgiveness, and carry hope and faith in the hole which was burned in your heart last week.
Michael F. Nyiri
poet
9/19/01