The whirling worlds within my mind,
The sweat and turmoil, agony and tears,
The song that cries!
The symphony that sings!
The struggle God, I can’t explain!
Where can I go to flee this path?
Where can I hide from life’s wild ways?
Too many joys!
Too many woes!
Too much, too much of agony within my heart,
Too much of pain to try to hold back sin’s wild
charge against mankind!
Why should I try?
O God, O God, where art thou?
When this world cries out in suffering, blood, and tears?
Where art thou,
Amid the pangs of hunger, germs, and death?
And heads of nations…struggling,
With motives often sick,
How can we know for what they dream and pray?
What is a man to do when war, the scourge of earth,
doth brandish all its swords to slice and kill and maim?
How can we think?
How can we speak?
How can we act?
What kind of burdens must we bear?
And those young men,
O God, my own,
And even me?
What must I do, for Thee, in this wild day?
But problems, troubles, pains, agonies, and sin
pile one upon another,
And my own brothers suffer, writhe in pain,
And long for light!
O Lord, I thank Thee for my home,
Its arsenal of tender love,
Its hope and peace serene.
The little times of tension, true, are there,
And strife to pay the bills
And agonies of dollars still not mine.
Save me from falling from the little shells,
Let it be no less than mighty bombs that slow my soul,
O let me stand against the storms of soul in home,
community, and world,
Just let me stand, and falter not.
The tears, the tears
They tell a tale of God,
Of feelings deep and real,
Of surging tides within my heart.
But what they mean I know not;
But this I know—
My dreams, they go awry.
Yes Lord, they happen not.
Are they all wrong,
Are they just little dreams,
Are they like flowers, to fade and die?
Why should I not be able then to live…
To write, to speak, to live, to live!
To reach and understand the souls of men
more real than I,
Why should I not reach them?
My mind is locked in lethargy and love of little ways
that block the call of God!
My eyes and mind, they cannot reach and
…..grasp the printed page
Of men with hearts inspired!
Why not? Why not?
And this I cannot know.
So many things I want. to do
I cannot sift them out
I want to live, to live, to reach the heights
To plumb the depths, to know the souls of men
To lift them up.
To see a smile where pain and sin have left their scars,
Where other men have hurt with no regard.
And so I close, still wandering in the dark,
Still lost within the maze of little ways.
Still groping for the stars,
With only dust within my hand!
(May 30, 1967)