Fr. Stan Fortuna Libre
Oh my beloved world
You have given me so much and yet so little
Always offering an answer to my questions
Always with a comeback for where I come from
And yet here I stand
Still full of questions of self
For your responses my world,
Have been an unread subscription
That lingers on the coffee table
With images that grab.
But your answers do not fill
So I just wanna say, “Yo soy libre”
Because I have been freed by the great I Am.
For I am as the cobblestone on
The Grand Concourse that call out
From breaks in the asphalt
What was once suffocating
From sinful tar and stony heart
Has been freed from the heat of Grace
I now see through the melting-pot holes
And now by my presence I call out
To the world that this land on the
Surface is not all there is or was
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
I am Carravagio spray painted
On the Spanish-Harlem wall
The beauty is unquestionable
And it calls out to all
But some choose to dismiss it
As Medieval graffiti
Chaining themselves up
With the fetters of false ideologies
Worshipping the beauty of creation
While executing in their hearts the Creator
Who has freed me
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
I am one who stands in awe of the martyrs,
But my tastes have changed
For once my heroes were
Pancho Villa, Che and Trotsky
For these died for what they believed
But man cannot find his end in himself
I too have envied the rich
Wishing it were I instead of they
For these lived for what they achieved or received
But man cannot be his own measure
So I have traded in the rhetoric of empowerment
For the contradiction of the Cross.
And now I know what freedom is
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
For what the Lord has kept from the wise and learned
He had revealed to mere children
That one must lose his life in order to gain it
Now my heroes are
A wrinkled blue and white
Flower from Calcutta
A bishop of a war torn land
Killed for preaching peace
And a man who goes throughout the world
Clothed in white
Saying, “Do not be afraid”
Lord, help me not to be afraid…
Lord, I need you to help me to not to be afraid…
Porque Yo soy libre,
Tu me has liberado.
Libre.
