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ALTERNATIV VERSES

OLD RIMES FOR NEW TIMES

seeds
out of the mud that covers them

Postcessional

God of our fathers from the past

Lord of their far-flung battle-line

Beneath whose awful hand we lost

Dominion over palm and pine -

Those warnings that we heeded not,

Have we forgot, have we forgot?

Far-called our bombers melt away,

On towns and jungles falls the fire,

Lo, all our wealth of yesterday

Is burnt with Troy and sunk at Tyre.

Lord God of ghosts that squander yet,

God of the lost, lest we forget.

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In missile tube and atom shard,

All craven dust that poisons dust

And guarding ruins what they guard,

For murdering boast and deadly word,

Not mercy as we give mercy, Lord.

Earth cannot pay our awful price,

Captains and commissars depart,

Alone a long-past sacrifice

Calls still for our contrite heart.

Lord God of hosts, remind us yet,

God of the lost, lest we forget.

At the last moment the missiles Saw the trees in the fields

And the wild things that run In the woods and the streams,

From the ricks and the barns, The town roofs and the weather vanes,

Faces on people in the strees,
And history that had come six thousand years.

They were poised, hanging above this. It was a theatre, a war theatre.
The scenario of the sky was black around it.
Within the sky shone, white,
Those stars already dead.

JERUSALEM OUR COUNTRY

And can those feet in future time
Walk on our crowded city street,
And may the holy Lamb of God
Stand where our intersections meet?

And shall the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our social hells,
And will Jerusalem be builded here
Among these bright satanic shells?

Bring me my jets of burning gold!
Bring me the lasers of desire!
Bring swords of words, and dreams, unfold!
Bring me the rocketry of fire!

I shall not cease from constant fight

Nor drop the weapons in my hand

Till children see Jerusalem

Still building in this promised land.

It would ring the bells of heaven that have not rung for years

If nations lost their powers and people came to theirs

And everyone together Rose up with fearful prayers

for wild and blinkered war-men

and maddened Bulls and Bears

and wretched bogey newsmen

and the mad, marching hares.

The bird is in the egg, while the bomb is in the shell,

the child is in the womb, the souls are in hell.

Fresh blows the breeze over the new ruins.

Flowers with the weeds are in the seeds in the cracks

that brought down these empires.

Take away the syringe from the brain, gun from the head,

horror from the eye of the children,

soot without the fire, pitch without the road,

offer no god's flesh when the communion is dead.

Tell the young children the bomb is in the egg, the bird is explosive,

that the infant is monstrous, the man born raging.

that cities lie vacant, winds carry the plague.

In the cracks waits a hope, waiting for a movement of will.

Turning from that screen, from the images, from the wall,

let your small hands, as the tendrils, reach for the sun.

Listen within you, there's silence, there's music,

Look now. Life's done. and again begun.

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