Leslie Coulson, 'The God Who Waits'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The God Who Waits

The old men in the olden days,
Who thought and worked in simple ways,
Believed in God and sought His praise.

They looked to God in daily need,
He shone in simple, homely deed;
They prayed to Him to raise their seed.

He sowed on mountain side and weald,
He steered the plough across the field,
He garnered in their harvest yield.

And if He gave them barren sod,
Or smote them with His lightning rod,
They yielded humbly to their God.

They searched the record of their days
To find and mend their evil ways,
Which made the wrath of God to blaze.

And if no evil they could find,
They did not say, "Our God is blind,"
"God's will be done," they said, resigned.

So played the old their humble part,
And lived in peace of soul and heart,
Without pretence of Reason's art.

But we have lost their simple creed
Of simple aim and simple need,
Of simple thought and simple deed.

Their creed has crumbled as their dust,
We do not yield their God as just,
Now question holds the place of trust.

Faith blossomed like the Holy Rod,
So grew the old men's faith in God.
We cannot tread the path they trod.

We were not born to anchored creed
That measures good and evil deed -
A guide to those who guidance need.

The God the old men hearkened to
We left, and in our image drew
And fashioned out a God anew.

That iron God, who still unfed,
Sits throned with lips that dribble red
Among the sacrificial dead.

Belching their flames between the bars,
Our fires sweep out like scimitars
Across the Eden of the stars.

And souls are sold and souls are bought,
And souls in hellish tortures wrought
To feed the mighty juggernaut.

The dripping wheels go roaring by
And crush and kill us where we lie
Blaspheming God with our last cry.

Man's cry to man the heaven fills;
We hear not in our marts and mills
The silent voices of the hills

The message of the breathing clay,
Calling us through the night and day
To come away, to come away!

For though old creeds, had we the will,
We cannot, lacking faith, fulfil,
The God above all creed waits still.

For still beyond the city gate,
The fallow fields eternal wait
For us to drive our furrow straight.

by Leslie Coulson

Cheryl Daytec, 'The Children of Gaza, Lying in Pools of Their Own Blood'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The Children of Gaza, Lying in Pools of Their Own Blood
(Footnote To The Gaza Bombings II)

They never heard
the soothing sound of music
In the Palestine air
Their days and nights were filled
With rattling guns
And muffled weeping of parents
They saw the shape of freedom
In the occasional flight
Of birds in their skies cast
In the gloom of violence

As other children waited
for Santa Claus’s gifts
The specter of their dreams
Levitated from their bodies
As they fell to the bullets
Of power that knows not
A terrorist wielding a gun
From a child playing
With a doll or a toy car

Their bodies have gone
To cemeteries
Or in rubbles
Beyond
The reach of shovels and hands
But their dream for freedom
Did not join them in the graves
It clings thick to the air of doom

Their last cries
Not comprehending the bloodbath
Their desire to soar free
Like eagles
Found their way into our pens
From ashes of carnage,
The dream will surge
Like time-worn slavery
Cutting loose from its chains
One day,
The world will know
Who The Chosen are among us
The lie we cradled
In ignorance
Will be clear as day
The graveyard full of infants
Shouts the truth

God would not arm His
people with bombs and guns
To slaughter the innocent

By Cheryl Daytec