May 24, 2006

Fence

There is a story about a scene in Hell.

It tells of a vast sea of some boiling substance, not water, something more viscous and clinging. Hundreds were suffering there, treading, barely keeping heads above the surface. Rather than merely being consumed and disintegrating, they were being flayed over and over again.

Suddenly, there came dangling down from above something of a filament, string-like. The nearest person took hold of it in desperation, and began slowly to be pulled upward.

All those around rushed to the scene to grab hold, others taking hold of them until a huge mass of human beings was being pulled slowly up and out of the scalding tempest. The person holding to the filament looked down, screaming and writhing to shake the others loose, so much so that the slender filament suddenly snapped, and the entire lot of them dropped and sank out of sight.

We’ve a Statue of Liberty, this land of ours, that tells us: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

There’s to be a tall fence built around it.

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