Jack Pelham

Let us imagine the day
On which the world
Had finally tired
Of its lying.

I had been troubled
That an old friend was mad at me
For my slowness to do as promised—
And adding to my procrastination
About important matters,
In my delay, I had hoped alternately
That he his silence had been
Simply because he was busy—
And then again that he must be mad—

When he is called to heaven
To have that meeting of a lifetime—

He, being mistreated,
Is not content to attribute it
To wickedness alone,
But has learned by example
To frame it in terms of
The groups to which he
And the mistreater belong.

Thus is he ever ready
To assume this spirit of faction
Upon everyone in the other group,
And upon their every motive—
Even when they had come in kindness.

And this, of course, is wickedness itself,
Which he counts not as sin but necessity,
On account of belonging to his own group,
Victim that it always is.

What would it be like
If all the sin were suddenly to stop?

The one says, “Please shut up so I can think this through for myself.”

And the other, “Please keep talking so that I don’t have to think this through for myself.”

The world was divided—
And still is today—
By the announcement
That God expects something
Of the humans here.

You can tell a people’s true religious convictions about justice and righteousness by whether they will see to it that their society is administered justly and righteously.

He who sitting in the dark house
Peering from its windows
Into the daylight without
And reveling in the glory of the day
Also chooses, to our surprise,
Not to notice that he does not
Live in the daylight himself,
But in the dark house,
Where he has made for himself
A twisted religion from pretending
With the aid of its shades,
Which he may raise and lower at will.

I have so much to say about this, and I have attempted to be brief, but I have failed. So here are my hard-hitting thoughts on the subject: