Segregation
The wail of a patient people voicing a patient claim;
‘O, judge as ye would be judged that have taken yourselves Christ's name
That flaunt in the new-found places the fame of a garnered past,
And look to a shadowy future for a strength that cannot last,
Because it is based on evil, on the barren germs that die
In sun-blanched sands and deserts wherein but dead things lie.
We twain that strive together - one strong in gathered might,
One weak, as yet, and wondering, agape at your Christian light -
Ye say we shall sit asunder, apart and separate
And the way ye walk, ye judges, ye proclaim a Christian gait.
O, no divided household shall stand but as a sham,
And the hand of the real adjuster is the hand of Abraham,
When he made with Lot a bargain; “No strife, I pray thee, go,
The land lies open left and right, choose which thou likest, thou;
Sobeit thou choosest eastward, the west mine own I make;
Sobeit they choice lies westward, then eastward will I take.
Thy herdsmen and my herdsmen shall war no more with each.
The land lies open for thy choice far as thine eyes can reach.”
O, ye say the way ye follow is the way of Abraham,
Yet ye choose Lot's portion pettishly to prove your house a sham.
Ye fix for your final barrier that no man shall transgress
No rule of the Christ ye follow, no faiths that your creeds confess,
But a rampart raised by your frenzy of fear of the broken reed,
A harlot faith that your fathers fashioned themselves in their need,
Which ye, soul-blind, complacent, serene in your mud-firm might,
Have set in your wavering lanterns to lighten your darkness by night.
Ye hold no more by the heaven your Christ with His healing hands -
O, never so white as yours, as your new-set rule demands -
Could show to His sad-eyed servants; for them your barrier stops,
And they must linger at even aloft on the mountain tops,
Or, entered in before ye, to bliss although they be black,
To show ye are more than your Saviour, the Crucified One, turn back.
Yea, we, that were made, as ye tender, too gross for your God to create,
Must bide below in the gateyard while ye enter alone the gate.
That is the faith ye practise, and ye come with hands raised high,
Bearing the cross He died on - for whom? Can ye make reply?
Aye, in your learned babble - a child's speech, empty of wit,
Groping for words and reasons as the straggling thoughts permit,
Frame, if you can, an answer, or argue your ashen first,
“We, He created to save; ye, He created accurst.”
Ye vision a new-made world, part white and part un-white ...
O, each is a piebald complex when seen in the sun's clear light.
For ye, with your boasted whiteness that mimics the sandstone's hue,
Have trafficked in blood too often to breed, like a blood mare, true.
The Mongol's fold on the eyelid, the marks on the opened hand,
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