FINAL CATHOLIC POETRY, 1945–47
The Pagan Isms
Around me roar and crash the pagan isms
To which most of my life was consecrate,
Betrayed by evil men and torn by schisms
For they were built on nothing more than hate!
I cannot live my life without the faith
Where new sensations like a fawn will leap,
But old enthusiasms like a wraith,
Haunt me awake and haunt me when I sleep.
And so to God I go to make my peace,
Where black nor white can follow to betray.
My pent-up heart to Him I will release
And surely He will show the perfect way
Of life. For He will lead me and no man
Can violate or circumvent His plan.
1945
[I turn to God for greater strength to fight]
I turn to God for greater strength to fight
The enemies of decency and truth,
Because he holds the Sacred Light
To lift me in His everlasting ruth.
Lord of the world, if I had only trod
In my youth’s prime the straiter way of life,
The joy that comes from having faith in God,
Would now exalt me in the thick of strife.
So help me then, that I may never quail
Before unrighteous men, though they’re equipped
With devastating weapons, clothed in mail
And arrogance and think they can’t be whipped!
Because they have bamboozled simple men
To think that all life lies within their ken.
1945
The Wise Men of the East
Oh, one was black of the wise men of the East,
Who came with precious gifts to Jesus’ birth,
A symbol all men equal were at least,
When Godhead condescended to the earth.
The Ethiopian in Jerusalem
Was human to the preacher of our Lord,
Who drawn to him as to a precious gem,
Bestowed on him the message of the Word.
Yes, and a great Black Empire was the first,
To change itself into a Christian nation,
Long before Rome its pagan fetters burst
And purged itself for Jesus Christ’s oblation.
From the high place where erstwhile they grew drunk
With power, oh God, how gutter-low have black men sunk!
1945
Faith
“The peace that passeth all understanding.”
Lord I seek not, I need only the voice
Of Thy true Faith authentic as I sing,
In my weak heart, so that I can rejoice
Within my soul. For if I can hold on
To Faith in Thee, no other things will count!
I know that I must face my God alone,
Though meddlers think their meddling plans amount
To aught in this new life to which I turn,
Scrambling like kids where angels fear to tread!
Oh Lord, there’s yet so vastly much to learn:
For Faith is Knowledge, Truth is just ahead,
And also right behind and present now!
Alive like flowers on the springtime bough.
1946
Truth
Lord, shall I find it in Thy Holy Church,
Or must I give it up as something dead,
Forever lost, no matter where I search,
Like dinosaurs within their ancient bed?
I found it not in years of Unbelief
In science stirring life like budding trees,
In Revolution like a dazzling thief,
Oh, shall I find it on my bended knees?
Oh, what is Truth, so Pilate asked Thee, Lord,
Two thousand years when Thou wert manifest,
As the Eternal and Incarnate Word,
Chosen of God and by Him singly blest:
In this vast world of lies and hate and greed,
Upon my knees, Oh Lord, for Truth I plead.
1946
The New Day
Thousands of years ago the Prophet said,
The lion and the lamb in peace will play,
And by a little child they shall be led,
When Jesse’s rod has flowered the New Day.
Because a golden Child to us is born,
Whose Light upon the earth shall never cease,
Whose Music rustles in each blade of corn—
The Wonderful, the Mighty Prince of Peace.
And shall not all men black and brown and white,
Together work and play in harmony,
In this grand age of universal Light,
The Christ Child gave to man to make him free?
His power through the world must penetrate,
Till it is cleansed of cruelty and hate.
1946
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages which they say were dark
Like me, were lit up with Thy grace, oh Lord!
And rare with music like a singing lark
Rising with notes of Thy divinest word!
Averrhoes, Aquinas and Maimonides,
Mohammedan and Christian and Jew,
Interpreted the richness of their creeds,
Thy Church brooding over all points of view,
Like a grand tree, rooted in faith supreme,
Its glory and its strength protecting all,
Illuminating Earth with Heaven’s beam
Of the Brotherhood of Man without the Fall!
Hermits and princes, men with wisdom’s rods
With which they walked abroad and talked to gods.
1946
Saint Meinrad
How excellently there among the hills
Saint Meinrad sets her lovely self, and stands,
A wonder to the land on which she spills
The richness flowing from her active hands.
From far and near her children seek this place,
And humbly sit them at their elders’ feet,
To hear the story of Christ’s wondrous grace,
And learn God’s wisdom in this blest retreat.
Oh, there are lovely regions on the earth
God has provided for the good of man
To turn from mundane ways and seek new birth,
To live again as surely as man can!
Such is Saint Meinrad chosen by the Lord
To propagate His everlasting word.
1946
The Word
The Word was God and God He was the Word!
How beautiful, majestic and sublime,
The Word of Man becomes the Sovereign Lord
Of Earth and Sea and Heaven for all time.
Lord of my word, inventor of all words,
Supreme Creator of the Word, Oh God
Who made our words to be as free as birds,
To sing and wing and ring when angels nod!
Thy Word, Thy lovely Music that should lift
Men up to know the grandly magnified,
Oh Lord, Thy wonderful and precious gift
We have betrayed, ignobly crucified.
Oh, spread Thy words like green fields, watered, fresh.
The Word is God and the Word is made flesh!
1947
[Oh shall those Holy Ages come again]
Oh shall those Holy Ages come again
Wherein man’s spirit life was greater far
Than any else within the ken of men
And signaled him to glory like a star.
The glory is departed from this age
Each nation stirs and writhes with jealousy
The scientist informs us—not the sage,
And men imagine they are ever more “free.”
Because they are afraid of discipline,
The meaning of Responsibility
The price that must be paid by man to win
Control over his utter destiny.
So science, not religion it comes from,
Which gives us cravens the Atomic Bomb.
circa 1945–47
[The whites admit the Negroes have religion]
The whites admit the Negroes have religion,
The stuff authentic, as it was conceived
By Jesus Christ, who gave the world his Vision
Which startled Mankind so that they believed!
But Negro religion to the whites is odd,
Because it’s a real part of Negro life—
While white folk have a special place for God
On Sunday when they cease from Satan’s strife,
And go to church—ostentatiously parade
To the grey-stoned, cold-white church—and for whites only 10
Where upon their knees they may command God’s aid,
Where Jesus Christ, our Lord, would be very lonely,
And desire to tumble down those soulless stones,
Useless and nude of life as piled-up bones.
circa mid-1940S
Thou art the issue of the Prince of Peace
Who from the Pagan moulded Christian man,
Who died that devastating wars should cease,
And life renewed according to His plan.
The baffled soldier and the lad at play,
They verily have one essential need:
They crave a world where they can breathe today
And live in simple faith and love and breed.
Oh Mother Church! Thou hast the only key,
The knowledge that can bring men back to God,
And help the sodden world again to see
The road to Calvary which Jesus trod!
The stars still lean out of the heaven aglow,
As the Star glowed a thousand years ago!
circa mid-1940S
[The world was called forth by the word of God]
The world was called forth by the word of God,
The thunder and the blackness and the rain
The universe, the heat, volcanoes, sod
And swimming, creeping things and man and pain.
A thousand years are like a day to Thee
Great God, who knows the mystery of Thy plan,
Absorbing all, what things men cannot see,
Thou art so far beyond the ken of man?
Our worshipping of Thee, oh God, even is blind!
How far to Thee our vanity can reach,
What glimpses have we of the eternal mind,
Who are so quick of Thee to rant and preach?
Oh Thou art manifested in all things,
Fixed, creeping, walking, those that fly with wings.
circa mid-1940S
[Some Negroes say that Jesus Christ was swart]
Some Negroes say that Jesus Christ was swart,
And that was why the Jews rejected him,
Just as when Moses for his better part
A Negro woman took, it was so grim
Unto his kin. They say the pictures of
Black Mother and the Child in monastery
And church in Europe are token of the proof
Of Jesus’ strange originality.
Well, Jesus’ color, black or brown or white
Pales into naught before the grand religion,
That He gave Mankind as the perfect Light
Of heaven to shine in Earth’s remotest region.
Yet imagine, if Africa did—wouldn’t it be strange?—
Give the whites a religion far beyond their range!
circa mid-1940S
Boomerang
The Japanese struck without declaring war,
And woke up the self-satisfied landlubber
To remind him that his lovely zephyr car
Could not continue running without rubber,
Which comes from labor of the backward races,
Where men like slaves are beaten to their knees
And paid a cent a day in many places,
To labor for the great democracies.
When Labor marches not with Capital,
In exploitation of its weaker brothers,
Then may we have that International
Of men who live by Truth and think of others,
Who also seek a better life and fight,
Under the banner of the Eternal Light!
circa mid-1940S
Lord of the Infinite, proclaim the Peace,
The human heart needs more than anything,
Oh let Thy voice announce that wars must cease
With magic of the ancient thundering!
Thy Church, Thine instrument, shall lead the way,
And bring Thy lost ones in like scattered sheep,
And fold them at the passing of the day,
And give them warmth and love and soothing sleep!
Half of the precious earth is scorched and dreary,
The people stumble in the darkness, blind,
And theory-ridden men are weary, weary,
And in the night no ray of hope can find.
The eternal truths today as in the past,
Must save us yet, if human life must last.
circa mid-1940S
[I could not hate the German or the Jews]
I could not hate the German or the Jews,
Or Negroes love more than another race,
God did not make me thus to pick and choose—
Should Negroes help the whites to be more base?
I hate not white men, but I hate their greed,
Their lives like thousands of congested maggots,
Which in the honey vats of life must feed,
Which dark men to make sweet must burn like faggots.
Yet all of us are sinners in this world,
And, oh Lord, I have often wondered why,
I have been spared and not obscenely hurled
Down through hell’s shafts of splintered glass to die,
Like many dust-burned by war’s blasting wind!
Lord, I have sinned, a thousand times have sinned!
circa mid-1940S
[I do not go to church in search of God]
I do not go to church in search of God,
Nor to the priest for greater revelation,
I would as soon expect that Moses’ rod,
Today could strike and free man from damnation.
I go to church and priest for discipline,
There is no discipline of greater merit,
Than agitates precisely from within,
And makes the body subject to the spirit!
Oh God to me is Love, Eternal Love!
And not a purposeless amazing whim,
All life is breath of God, below above,
God is a spirit and they who worship him
Seeking his loving-kindness and his ruth,
Must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
circa mid-1940S
[Tell me not what love is because I know]
Tell me not what love is because I know,
And you do not, for you have never felt
The passion that is love, and which can grow
To madness, or like avalanches melt
And sweep all things before it into hell.
Preach not about the thing you’ve never known,
The tinkling, throbbing sound of Passion’s bell,
Its music ripe like fields of corn wind-blown.
Oh God, the terror, the consuming flame,
The sweat that oozes from the body of love,
The magic, gem-like in a simple name,
And luscious like the murmurs of a dove!
Oh love is God and God is love indeed,
And he alone its madness can control!
Oh burning bodies and oh hearts that bleed,
Of flesh exalted, duelling the soul!
circa mid-1940S