Amos in Babylon II, That Great City

(A Jeremiad for the New Millennium, by Phyliss Hammerstrom)

I will not pour champagne
to toast the new millennium.

Wearing a shroud
Stinking of death

I will lie down on broken glass vials
broken syringes

needles
in the middle of Times Square

for six months on one side
and nine months on the other

eat food measured in grams
sip tainted water from an eyedropper.

II.

I will loosen a horse from the harness,
cover his back with a black cloth and shout

“Mourn for the swordfish, the tuna, the sightless
pigeons.
Mourn for the bear and the wooly buffalo,

for the oriole, bluebird, and vireo
for pandas and turtles,

for veal raised in pens too tight to turn around,
for cancerous retrievers, greyhounds, fighting
cocks,

mourn for cows downwind from Chernobyl’s
fire-wind.
mourn for microbes and insects.

mourn for all manner of life twisted, turmorous
and threatened
by contact with humans.”

III.

With a tape measure
I will measure the distance from Grand Central to
Madison Avenue

“Mene Mene Tekle Upharsin”
disembodied fingers write

Measure-short
Weighed—found wanting.

IV.

I will make soup in a garbage can,
serve it steaming on the corner of Wall and Broad,

float a plastic baby in the greasy gruel
offer it to the suits

“Come and eat!
Tomorrow you will eat it with relish.”

I will drag all the books of wisdom
Torah, Koran, Bible, Tao

on a cable and treble hook
through the streets from the Public Library,

truth from all ages, discarded
blowing away in the wind tunnels of the
streets.

There is no greater desecration left
(all the crucifixes already under urine)

Images devoured;
Words despised.

VI.

I will serve communion at the “God-box”
Riverside
And at Trinity Cathedral

Oreo cookies
and Coca-cola.

“You have made warm-fuzzy gods more to your
liking
and followed hard after entertainment rather
than worship.

Excised from Scripture what doesn’t fit your
lifestyle;
Exegeted the front page of the Times;

Proclaimed God is dead;
lived as though He were dead.”

VII.

I will go to Madison Square Garden at half-time,
I would say to New Yorkers, to America,

“You are in the valley of decision.

Choose today whom, or what you will serve.

Choose life or death
Choose life
Choose life
Choose life.”

Phyliss wrote this for a Chautauqua Workshop in the summer of 1999 (just before the turn of the new millennium), although it’s perhaps even more appropriate in the past twenty years since 9/11. I normally like to focus on what is good and beautiful, as taught in Philippians 4:8, but there is also a time to consider our many failures as a country. As Americans, we need to repent and seek God . . . to choose the life and blessing that only God can give as we submit ourselves to Him.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

As an ex-marine and tireless humanitarian worker who loves God, Phyliss has seen a lot of life—both the beautiful and the ugly. Her call is to everyone who reads this: Who are you living for? What is your hope and purpose?

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).