To the Coming Man
Hymn
May I speak of him that shall come? But how
shall I utter his secret name? – I, a
man among men, subject to failing, always
on the abyss's edge, lonely and helpless against
the world's wildness which breaks,
blackness, into me like a band of robbers
into a deserted house?
May one speak who stumbles? – speak who is
still a seeker? – who goes astray
take God?s station and say: This I will?
Yes. With the right of the prisoner who
weeps for freedom I invoke freedom,
with the call of yearning the dream, and
with the mourning of the racked man the distant
order of goodness.
With the right of him who suffers – with that
sole right which resists the darkness and dwells
on other shores by the waters of spotlessness –
with the divine claim of the much-enduring I call for
the autumn of torment, of the living
fruit and the winepress of bitterness. Amen.
Shall we go hungry? – who always
say to the new arrivals: Are you
hungry? Shall we go cold and be without
a fireside's comfort? while the ground
breaks up beneath our feet and the roof above our heads
and the land of our birth as in a dream revealed
is not? – not in the hundred current titles of honour?
Shall we die? over and over again
Go forth and die?
and no one take from the mark of our wounds
that terrible legend: For Nothing?
What I suffer all suffer. And therefore
I speak. To whom speech is given
it is fit that he speak. For all.
If I sin, then we sin, all of us. But if I
find the fitting word, I free, I
redeem us from loss. I need no laurel.
We are fallen deep into
every species of poverty: thrown back on
the last thing left: to stand,
to reflect, and to assert the last remnant: the
poor dignity of man.
Not the hard imperative of transience and not
the rank pullulation of growth
makes our distress: the powers
are gracious to reverence of every kind.
But we overvaulted order set up
a new image: Ours: of arrogance, divided
into victors and vanquished. But
he who now comes will bend the head.
Ghastly 'Lord of the Earth' who are you?
Look! he speaks of God and tramples his neighbour
just as he treads down the flowers and is
utterly helpless against his own devising, against
the whole curse of declension which makes him
drunk and destroys him. Helpless his presumption, helpless
his flight from the horror, and full of
horror his last resource: Violence.
Let him not speak of God or Gods. Neither
shall we find outside us. Oh, whom
do temples yet exalt
at a time when the churches
are unable to save?
Harnessed before his greed he feeds with pomp and paeans
God or the Gods. Above and
beyond himself he fixes them, for more and
in other regard than their creation
he takes for divine what is his.
Man of the middle you I sing!
Between misery and splendour, indignation and
long-suffering, you will retire
into yourself, a likeness of Godhead.
Resting in you
all things will subsist and will love you
and you will rejoice in the
strength of deliverance and serve.
Come to us you who shall come. With the right of the prisoner
who weeps for freedom I invoke freedom,
with the cry of yearning the dream, and
with the mourning of the racked man the distant
order of goodness.
With the right of the sufferer – with that
sole right which resists the power and dwells
on other shores by the waters of spotlessness –
with the divine claim of the much-enduring I call for
the autumn of torment, of the living
fruit, and the winepress of bitterness. Amen.
Translated by D.M. de Silva
Page(s) 90-92
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