I’ve swept the sins of my father’s out
Can I get a drink that is not stained by history?
(from Sins of the Fathers, a song Poor Bishop Hooper)
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The cooler air carries calmness
Who is speaking?
Who hears?
Who wants to understand?
Hurried, harried, hustled into a thousand things
Unloved and unwanted
Giving rise to a thousand things to unlearn
Who will teach us other ways
To the ones that have bound us so tight
Within constriction and pain and unacknowledged losses?
Great uncertainty looms like a storm soon to break
To drench us with the dread of disease
And dying a lonely singular death
What flickers on in our dreams?
A candle soon to be snuffed out
Or the promise of sunrise?
Could there now be an end to evil empires
Citadels of sin
Palaces of shame
To ignoble ignorance
That shamelessly exalt the utmost guilty
And condemn the most innocent?
Thousands and thousands of humanity
Brush in bloodied hands
Weeping
Sweep and sweep their ruined city of shards of glass
A people pierced by anger and grief in equal measure
Where is my broom?
What are those shards hurting my feet?
From what horrifying blast did they come?
And where will strength come from
To ingest rage and work toward a quiet acceptance
Of that which cannot be changed
But must be reckoned with?
…
From He who lived
From He who died
From drinking to the end
The so bitter dregs
Of humanity’s horror
The cup did not pass
From Him
The most innocent slain
By the utmost guilty
The most holy
Stained
By the utmost filthy
He did not protest to die such a lonely singular death
But Sunrise came
And there He appeared drenched in glory
And victory’s shout
‘’’
Godless generations can now stop
Dead in their tracks
And sweep the sins of their fathers out
I can sweep the sins of my fathers out
The cooler air carries calmness
A candle soon to be snuffed out
Or the promise of sunrise?
