Classic Poem

Do you think that you who looking upon your neighbor cannot see Christ may better see Christ looking back over centuries of time?
Your Christs you each day kill and your Christs each day are resurrected:
The chant towards the past, the prayer up to heaven, the shudder down to hell,
The spires of churches babeled into clouds and confusion perpetuated among sects,
The resonant outcries of refugees and death's clangors when armies meet,
The gestures of priestly hands and the blind arbitrament of laws that make courts of justice impossible:
With these against you O Christs you will survive still to the last day:
Not with crowns of thorns ostentatiously flourished,
Not with the crosses of saviors or with the disputes of disciples,
Not in text books or in frescoed temples or in palaces of mighty brigands,
But with people you need not go beyond your curb to find,
Whose struggle for release from thraldom is that of the seed underground eager for spring:
For these all old Christs have abdicated.