Atonement


Alabama State Troopers attack SNCC leader John Lewis, Edmund Pettus Bridge, Montgomery, 
Alabama, March 7, 1965
Courtesy U.S. Library of Congress (LC-DIG-ds-12577)For so many years
I raged at the machine
Enraged rantings of an angry little boy
Life is funny - how it turns out
Cul de sacs and blind alleyways
Dead ends - unexpected - for which we now must atone

So many days of piss and vinegar
Bitter words, unkind action
Spread to the wind and hard to ever retrieve
It's understandable - you might say 
Why worry about what can't be undone
Well, if this were true
Then, what hope is there left for the unjustified dead
Who will speak for mother's left broken 
As their sons swung from the lynching tree

No, there is an accounting ahead
A reckoning to be had
If not now - then on Judgement Day

The Cherokee tears
The black man's screams 
Their blood cries out to us from the grave
Our lands are stolen
Our gold - it has been drenched in martyr's blood

So what is to become of us?
Who will answer for the white man's greed?
God only knows
But when it comes 
All of us will cry "Mercy!"
And - I fear - there will be none to be had

God help us! - we cry
And He will answer us
Where were you then?
When they cried for mercy from you?

dg

Mother's Day 2020


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