Return to If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride




The stars look like a broken belt

Glittering over the lakes and mountains

 

The moon looks like a tilted crown

 

Down here there's a whole lot of racket

In Churches and bedrooms

Some good folks are speaking in tongues

And raising the rafters

 

I wonder if the Lord ever gets tired

Of so much flattery from the fundamentalists

He probably likes it better

Than all the complaints and entreaties

 

I'm standing up to listen

But he has nothing to say to atheists

 

It would be nice to believe

That heaven is like a schooyard

In which everyone gets chosen

Even the laggards

 

My friends are seekers and exiles

Who won't desert the stories

 

Me

I can't give him up

But I can't believe in him either

It's a one-sided relationship

I without thou

 

He has whole galaxies to worry about

I don't suppose he gets too worked up

My puny self

Is more real to me

Than his immense nonbeing

 

I'm a tiny void with attributes

With my own little river of tears

 

But what is he

Who fills the world with trees and stars

And leaves us alone

With our wars and atrocities

Our deadly human nature

Our sad dominion over the fish and the fowl

 

Look

No one knows why

There is so much silence in the upper spheres

And so much suffering down here

 

The Almighty skipped over our houses