To Julie Medlock

The world is getting worse and worse, no solution now in sight,
And if there is a Living Lord, why does He withhold His light?
Destruction is before us, of that there is no doubt,
So the Ghana boys will catch us, if we don’t watch out.

The Philistines are marching, but under other names;
The white peoples are playing at supermurd’rous games
The Africans are laughing; they do not sit and pout
And the Ghana boys will catch us, if we don’t watch out.

Hurray for propaganda, down with the enemy—
With editors behind the lines as far as they can be;
But rising poets see this, so they may stand and shout:
Triple Alliance Zindabad! The rest watch out.

The Germans long have passed their prime, an age all filled with crime,
The Russian and Americans are leading—for the time.
But Ghana, Guyana and Guinea are waiting for their day
When in this democratic world they’ll have their little say.

For half the world is suffering from unnecessary malnutrition,
And the greater powers offer them a scientific attrition.
The neutralists are standing by for neighbors they would clout,
But the Ghana boys will catch us all, if we don’t watch out.

For we have plenty more to say, and words come in profusion,
But not a single set of them offers a real solution.
Laws against mass genocide, with a single nuclear error,
Terminating half the world in giant super-terror.

O we the super-race must be, even to kill each other.
Christ is ever to be magnified but not Christ’s little brother.
And so the little people see the last may be the first,
The black will rise after the day the white has done his worst.

March on, ye little people march, issue a proclamation,
God’s little people may reside in the most rejected nation,
Ghana, Guyana, Guinea, march—that it be understood,
That humanity, including all, is one big brotherhood.

The “International” proclaims the words, the Marxists now reject;
The anti-Marxists join them in spreading disrespect,
But God is lurking in our midst, of that I have no doubt.
And the Ghana boys will catch us all, if we don’t watch out.

To Me hath Been Granted a Garden


To me hath been granted a garden,
Tho only for my care,
To nourish the plants and flowers
That may be growing there.

‘Twas God that granted this garden,
For only the other day
The owner, my neighbor, left it,
To use it, as I may.

And dahlias shall grow in the garden,
and roses of beauty rare,
And daisies and tulips and daffodils,
And poppies and lilies fair.

Yes, there shall be many flowers,
But not alone will they grow,
But beauty and love and hope and truth,
These also, shall I sow.

And fairies shall play in this garden,
Sylphs and elves and gnomes,
And birds shall sing there all day long,
And make their summer homes.

Yes, and bees shall gather the honey,
And toil there all the day,
Whilst I shall gather the flowers,
For that is all my pay.

And what shall be done with the flowers?
Is the question you may ask,
For after all, they’d only be
A reward for my daily task.

No, God will have grown these flowers,
And to God shall they be given,
And I but the steward in that back yard,
For our Father who art in Heaven.

There’ll be some for the poor and lowly,
And some for those sick in bed,
And others for those in hospitals,
And for the children whose parents are dead.

And so shall all the flowers,
Be a hope for those whose life
Is shut from the beauties given by God,
Who are lost in this world of strife.

And everywhere in this garden,
That God hath granted me,
Shall love be planted and love grow,
And I his servant be.

As for the blossoms that come there,
A message shall each bring,
Beauty and love and joy and hope,
And every flower shall sing.

To the Nizam

The lump of clay served as a very good tablet for the Babylonian;
Then from the reeds of the Nile and the trees of the forest parchment was made;
The Beni Israel would not adapt dead substances to inscribe the words of life,
So the skins of sheep recorded the mysteries of Torah.
Now Allah, to Whom be all Praise, writes His doctrines into the hearts of men.

Is man more worthy that he should be the tablet of the Lord?
Let the foolish man praise the field for its ripe cherries,
And the ignorant adore the mud for the rose and the lotus.
Out of the dust of the ground doth Allah bring forth treasures,
Who created man from the least, yet imparted to him Love.
Now that the seals of the treasure chests have been opened,
Now that the fruit of the Garden is being shared far and wide,
Give thanks unto Allah and ever renew this praise,
For His Message today is travelling to the ends of earth.

Lo fool, even this mud was God’s,
Even the earth and all that it conceives;
From the Adamic raised He Adam and blessed him.
Iblis from his high state was banished for bowing not before Adam,
Then he plotted vengeance upon his Lord.
“My Lord will I obey, most certainly:
Henceforth I shall bow before man, bow before wealth, bow before power.
A thousand times shall I obey the Lord. I will worship man,
And man seeing me, shall bow before man, bow before wealth, bow before power.”
So man has worshipped man, forsaking the Truth.
But the Truth will arise—
A lump of clay, a reed of the Nile, the skin of a sheep, the tongue of man,
And on the morrow the heart of the Prophet will make itself known.

Praised be He, the Giver of Light and Life and Truth,
From Whose Bosom came Qur’an and Masnavi,
And Who will never deprive humanity of the Spirit of Guidance.

Who Are the Bandits?

Bandits!
With the wailing of a thousand bleeding infants,
Dying mothers with babes in arms,
And the shattered ruins of a mighty city;
Walls fallen on helpless men and women,
Crushed amid the smouldering debris,
And the pitter-patter of a rain of bullets.

Bandits!
Where the craven lusty men in uniform
Charge with bayonets upon little students,
Raking with shell-fire the homes of peaceful people,
Crying: “This must be for the sake of order and peace.”
Force apologizes to force in the name of civilization
And taunts the weak as pariahs of the earth.
Thus Buddha is avenged as Christ before Him,
And China bathed in blood.

Bandits!
Aye! The Perfect One is now become the scapegoat,
Whose missionaries serve the hand of Mammon,
And murder lurks beneath the yellow robe.
The wisteria is bathed with scarlet hue,
And the cherry blossom a symbol of tyranny.

Is this the best that man can do to man?
To hurl a holocaust upon the timid,
And smash the innocent in Moloch’s arms?
Then doomed is civilization,
And the bystander and warrior down together
Shall go when Justice flees away from earth.

May this not be;
May some mightier power
Arise to sink these murderers in ignominy,
And save the world from falling in the dust.
China! Your night will pass,
The dawn will rise and see you once more free,
Leader in all the humane arts as of yore,
Proving to humanity who are the righteous
And leaving them freest choice to judge
Who are the bandits.

Who Crucified Jesus?

Who really crucified Jesus Christ?
It was not the Romans,
Nor they were concerned with political enemies;
It was not King Herod
Who refused every sort of responsibility;
Nor was it the Sanhedrin
Who worshipped the Sabbath even more than they worshipped God.

Who really crucified Jesus Christ?
Perhaps he did it himself—
His beloved disciples had all fled;
Even the timid John was not so near.
The time had come,
And when the time had come
He arose from the seeming dead to deliver his Message,
But the disciple Judas had blamed himself and suicided,
And Thomas doubting thinking it would not possibly be,
So he summoned all of them to an upper room—
Ye grand believers—what is this “upper room?”
And there in the state of unifying ecstasy,
They entered into the vastness of the Is,
For the first time beholding Jesus Christ.

Jesus crucified himself
That God might live in him.
It was the ignorance that passed away.
It was the absolute which came to appearance.
This history, how false its records are.
This mystery, how true its statements are.

But instead of the upper room, the church;
Instead of manifestation, blind belief;
Instead of gnosis, verbal theology—
Must we begin it all, all over again?

Let the clerics beware of hell,
Let me sing of the upper room,
And the uppermost of the upper rooms.
The lift of which is in my song,
The lift of which is in my music,
Ah, that upper room?
What was the crucifixion?