They placed your image high above the chapel floor
in stained glass, as if to say that you were wrong,
at least in this one thing—some men are angels after all.
A few hundred yards from your chapel station
stands old Nassau Hall where the Congress met
and charged you to help design a constitution.
You knew that men, though touched with blessedness,
could not control their passions when commonweal
struggled to be born out of the womb of selfishness.
You knew that power would tug the will along
a path of self-destruction. You set your barricades
in place so power would be confronted yet in peace.
Your canny design is threatened now by smug
lust for empire. Fear is enlisted to invite
surrender to the call of cruel aggression.
Keep us safe, St. James. Hold us to the rule of law
that you designed to check the rotten impulses
of powerful men whose ache for righteousness,
so flawed, is bounded only by courageous acts
of ordinary souls who read and talk and write
of simple peace, compassion and daily sacrifice.
Our greater call commands us hold safe your
fragile memorial; let no self-inflicted war shatter
your bright window of light and self-control.
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