LAMENTATIONS FOR NEW ORLEANS: By Beverly Cushman (the first of seven)

A Lamentation is a poem that deals with the bewilderment and distress felt by a person or a community in a situation of disaster that cannot be changed, like death, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, or the destruction of New Orleans. Unlike a Lament there is no pleading for healing, for correction of an injustice, and no sense of hope.

I dedicate these lamentations to the people of New Wilmington Presbyterian Church who are giving their time, energy, and hope to the people of New Orleans. I dedicate these lamentations to all who have gone to New Orleans to rebuild it houses, to work in healing the brokenness, and to hear the stories that must be told again and again and again...and again. I dedicate these lamentations to the people of New Orleans who live in the FEMA trailers, who struggle with insurance paperwork, and who cling to the memory of what was and the hope of what may be.

I pray that these lamentations may give voice to the people who love New Orleans.


Lamentation One
(#1 in a series of seven lamentations)

New Orleans, New Orleans, my city…my city.[1]
I have seen the breaking of your levees;
Your ramparts are as streets of mud.
A voice is heard in on the riverbank,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
NOLA is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted
for her children are no more.[2]

New Orleans has gone into exile,
She lives now among strangers
but finds no resting place.
She asks for “turtle soup”
and no one knows of it;
for “crawfish étouffé.”
They shake their heads.

New Orleans remembers,
even in the days of her affliction and wandering.
She remembers all the precious things
that were hers in days of old.
“For these things I weep;
My eyes flow with tears
For any comfort is far from me.
Who will revive my courage?
My children are scattered;
their homes are ruins
there are no jobs to come back to.”
NOLA stretches out her hands,
But there is no one to comfort her.
Her fellow citizens have turned to other concerns.
This city is a filthy remnant among them

She was “The City that Care Forgot,”
her future was secure.
She cries out, “Lord, look at my affliction,
for those who made promises have forgotten me.”
Those who were left behind groan aloud
neither bread nor water in the convention center;
no shelter or safety in the Super Dome.
“Look, O Lord, see how worthless I have become.
Look, my fellow Americans, all you who pass by,
Look and see: Is there any sorrow like my sorrow?”
Governments have become her masters,
sowing small change and promises amongst the mud and the ruins.
There is no national will to save her from her suffering.
They no longer remember her destruction,
for other disasters have taken her place.
Those who honored her have beheld her nakedness,
She, herself, groans and turns away her face.

How long, O Lord?

Why have you forgotten us completely?
Why have you forsaken us, these many days?
Restore us, O Lord, that we may be restored.
Renew us as in days of old.[1]
Let “le bon temps rouler”

1] Lamentations 5:20-21.
1] 2 Samuel 18:33b.
[2] Jeremiah 31:15.