_Great God, deliver us!_
A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin
Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack, and cry of
death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars where
church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the
greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance!
_Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!_
In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears
and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and
leer and cry with bloody jaws: _Cease from Crime!_ The word was mockery,
for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one.
_Turn again our captivity, O Lord!_
Behold this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black
man, who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They
told him: _Work and Rise!_ He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but someone
told how someone said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known.
Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife
naked to shame, his children to poverty and evil.
_Hear us, O heavenly Father!_
Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long
shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound
in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed
brutes, who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn
it in hell forever and forever!
_Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_
Bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed
and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne,
we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our
stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of
Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the plan; give us the
sign!
_Keep not Thou silent, O God!_
Sit not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb
suffering. Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless,
heartless thing!
_Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_
Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words! Thou art
still the God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul's Soul sit some soft
darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.
But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to
our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path!
Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and
without, the liar. Whither? To death?
_Amen! Welcome, dark sleep!_
Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup
pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that
clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet
shudder lest we must,--and it is red. Ah! God! It is a red and awful
shape.
_Selah!_
In yonder East trembles a star.
_Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!_
Thy Will, O Lord, be done!
_Kyrie Eleison!_
Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words.
_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_
We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little
children.
_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_
Our voices sink in silence and in night.
_Hear us, good Lord!_
In night, O God of a godless land!
_Amen!_
In silence, O Silent God.
_Selah!_