Poetry Feature: Agony Into Daylight

he’s come to spread the good word.

two men

the old KING and the young HUME

meet and mirror in ‘68.

a great and ghastly year,

where fiery passion came

to burn out their nations.

a baptist preacher

a papist college teacher

with language to make

binmen and linen girls

feel like kings and queens.

urging that if we only act

on known virtues,

we will get home

someday.

what manner of man was this?

a prophet of the disinherited,

despised even by the other prophets.

he saw no roman nor slave.

he saw only men and their depressions,

ossified in himself.

took their hands,

marched their spirits.

he smelt thievery and turned over market tables

he heard bigotry and taught brotherhood

he felt barbarity and twisted its swords

he saw hate and gave love.

a man bringing us

not the old truths

but a new one.

beyond his city

beyond his year

beyond the darkness of what we only see now.

a new truth

told not in words

but in a bright day called

doing.