Читать книгу Psalms for Skeptics - Kent Gramm - Страница 13

he shall judge among the heathen

The heathen went with Robert Kennedy

some distant place where being born again

is wise but doesn’t matter worth a damn;

or they are marching to Montgomery

singing the old songs, walking hand in hand

with Bobby, Martin, Abraham, and John;

or they took the next bus for Birmingham

to see that insolently naïve swan

stagger on the cold wind, and try again.

Let us follow them to San Francisco

with flowers in our hair—one for children

born to marry the universal soldier,

one for the country I remember when,

and one for Jesus when he comes again.

I’m writing now because there’s nothing else

to do while waiting for that distant drum.

This is my way of going on a drunk

to change the world. The woman at the well

hallucinates under the midday sun.

She would have come early in the morning,

the doomed villagers shuffling and yawning,

but these days she prefers to come alone,

lowering the pail down that sunless hole;

until someone asks the smallest favor—

Water, just a little cup of water,

for the future, not for me, for the soul—

and the universal soldier’s daughter,

quietly hoping this one’s the Savior . . .