#Anyway I know one (1) piece of theology and it's every possible answer to 'how can you be BOTH jewish AND an atheist'

[vergess]

The good Samaritan IS the 'localized' version. The thesis is, "your internal beliefs are less valuable than your external actions."

Another version, eg, is the Reason for the Atheist

It's a story about identifying a person's actions not their background data. And, I think it's worth emphasizing that the audience is, in fact, a specific character within the narrative, same as Jesus himself.

With that in mind, I have 2 points to make.

First: The people who pass the dying man aren't a cop and a priest. I get that "priest" is how people translate rabbi, but it really interferes with the way people conceptualize rabbis at all. And I'm certain christian Americans don't generally know who/what levites even are.

The people who pass the dying man are more accurately a teacher and a doctor. Both are, in this case, members of groups that are trained to save lives and handle emergencies around dead bodies (American school shooting statistics are... dismal).

Those are the people who turn away. Who don't even check if the thing on the side of the road is alive, though they would have obligations to a corpse too.

And THEN the foreigner from the other side of the war, stuck in the same neighborhood by careless colonizers. THEN, after a DOCTOR walked away from his maybe-dead body... this person we don't know, who walks like a soldier and clearly fought for the other side. This person that WE, THE AUDIENCE have been taught to see as the insurmountable Other comes along, and he walks towards the could-be corpse. At best WE expect him to be killed quicker.

But the Man We Distrust checks for a pulse. Cleans and bandages the wounds. Feeds and hydrates the body. We, the audience, know the traveller is alive. We never actually see the traveller respond to any of this treatment; we can only assume.

What matters is not the traveller, after all, but the kindness shown to the traveller. What matters is the shared respect for human beings, between the audience and the Samaritan. The "we're not so different after all."

It's a story about the hypocrisy that exhaustion breeds, and how to identify both failure of duty among each other, and the responsibility of kindness to each other.

Both Jews and Samaritans were exhausted, colonized peoples. And tension from that exhaustion could easily lead to Yet Another War.But resolving that tension allows one to direct the anger of exhaustion to the people responsible.

See, my second point is, we keep forgetting, there is a villain in the story.

Here's how I would localize it today, for the rural baptist area I grew up in.

Dying man: A little blond white child, still dying

Rabbi: Elementary school teacher, social worker, etc

Levite: Pediatric doctor, nurse etc

Samaritans: An "obvious gang of thugs." Mostly Latino and Black men. Wearing similar clothes and """walking aggressively"""

The gang of thugs from the actual story itself: Cops who thought the kid was a school shooter. TERFs who thought the kid was trans. Nazis who heard the kid was Jewish. Rich businessmen who starved the kid to death in the streets. Whatever actually hurt the dying child in the first place.

The moral is, simply, that our allies are not defined by the names they use or their mere proximity to us. They are defined by HELPING US AND EACH OTHER.

And who is "Us?"

Not the people actually hurting us, that's for damn sure.

The closest a cop is getting to being in this story is as the gang of thugs who nearly killed the traveller in the first place.

I'm attaching an English la copy of the parable below.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested [Jesus], saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

But [the lawyer], desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus answered:

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

Random thought brought on by seeing a veterinarian sign on the drive to Coffee Land, but I think Jesus would really appreciate people localizing his parable of the Good Samaritan.

Because, like, it's a good story, right? When the administrator-guy and the holy man wouldn't help the injured, the Samaritan went out of their way to make sure the injured man was able to get the help they needed, paid out of their own pocket. And that's good and all, but what even is a Samaritan? Do you know?

Well, they're a ethnoreligious group from northern Israel who follow Samaritanism, which split from Judaism sometime around the 11th century BCE. There's only about a thousand of them left. But around the time of Jesus, they were not very popular with your average Hebrew. Remember the Seleucid empire that was oppressing jews? There's a yearly celebration about it, involving a candle that lasted for 8 nights. Yeah. So at the time the Samaritans had taken the opportunity to point out they're not Jewish, they're Samaritans, so they wouldn't be persecuted. So they were seen as, like, selling out their brothers and sisters in the faith. Then by the time the Romans took over the whole area, the province of Judaea contained Samaria.

So basically the Jews and the seen-to-have-sold-them-out Samaritans were stuck in the same province, thanks to some Romans consolidating the areas they'd conquered. Tensions between the two groups were high, and I don't imagine either of them liked each other very much at all.

To a Jew of the first century CE, a Samaritan is basically the worst kind of person you could be, and that's exactly why Jesus used them in the parable of the Good Samaritan!

The parable isn't about Samaritans. It's about how the worst person you can imagine is a better person than the people you idolize and uplift, if that person takes care of their fellow man. It's about how you should love your neighbor as yourself, and who is your neighbor? Everyone. All people are your neighbors. Help them when they need help!

And that's why I say it should really be localized. You should tell this parable differently than it was told in AD 29 or whenever. Do you hate Samaritans? Probably not! You probably barely know who they are, even after I did some explaining up there. So why use them as your example? If Jesus was here, I don't think he would have done that.

So like, if you were giving a sermon on the good Samaritan in the 1960s to a white church, you should be like "so the policeman walked past, and the pastor walked past, but then a poor black guy saw the injured man, and got him help at the local hospital."

In the 80s, his rescuer is Soviet. In the 2000s, they're a Muslim, from Afghanistan or Iran.

Today? Maybe they're trans.

As an American, there's been many times that "Mexican" would have been the best choice. Maybe even today, especially if you specifically make them an undocumented migrant.

But yeah, the point is that you pick the group of people most hated by the audience you're talking to, and make the point that THEY ARE A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU and ALL THOSE YOU UPHOLD AS PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY if they help their fellow man. If your worst enemy is lying injured in the street, you call the ambulance, you pay their doctor, you get them help. That's what Jesus says you should do. That's loving your neighbor, that's the Great Commandment.

And in the Roman province of Judea back in the first half of the first century, when talking to a Jewish audience, that meant the rescuer was a Samaritan helping a Jew. That was just the context for that one particular telling of the story. It shouldn't be told the same way today, or in the future. It should be an evolving parable, always changing, always adjusting the nationalities and situations and genders and everything. It's not a story about a specific event, it doesn't pretend to be history, it's a metaphorical lesson about what makes you a good person.

This parable is basically in the form of an "X, Y and Z walk into a bar" joke, and just like jokes, it should be updated over time. Those don't stay funny though the decades, as cultural attitudes shift. And this parable hasn't been updated in nearly two millenia, so it's long overdue.

[quranreadalong]

#124, Surah 23

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 124

Surah 23 is called Al-Muminun, meaning “The Believers”. As far as I recall, it does not contain a single original thought that we have not seen in a previous surah. Because of that, I’m gonna pad this surah with a lot of shit that hasn’t fit in anywhere else. We got some history lessons, we got some, uh, abortion debate. Get ready.

Most of this late Meccan surah concerns Mohammed yelling at disbelievers who question certain aspects of his theology, like resurrection and the afterlife. While the surah as a whole is undoubtedly from Mecca, there are some who believe that parts of it, including the first eleven ayat, are from Medina. You’ll see why in a sec.

The best thing about Al-Muminun is that we’ll only have two more suwar more than 100 ayat long to go once we’ve finished it.

The possibly Medinan, possibly Meccan introductory ayat state the following: Muslims who are humble before Allah in their prayers are awesome and will be successful in life. They avoid “vain conversation” and pay the zakat. They do not have sex with anyone except their wives or their sex slaves. (Those who do have sex with women who are not their slaves or wives are transgressors.) They keep their covenant with Allah and keep up their prayers, so they will go to jannah.

Right. So... what have we got here? It’s mostly neutral, as each ayah is a short little line. I’ll put down the raping of sex slaves as bad and the avoidance of “vain conversation” and paying the zakat as good as per usual.

Here are a few reasons why this section might’ve been from the Medina days. First of all, as you’ll see, the style of these ayat is different from those that come after them--the rest of the surah has longer ayat, and the section after this starts with a totally different train of thought. Second, most (but not all) of the time the word “zakat” is used, it’s a Medinan ayah. (Some say that the zakat mentioned here is meant in a general sense of paying money to the community, rather than the specific tax from Medina with all the rules associated with it.) Finally, the only other suwar that allow raping sex slaves are from Medina. It’s totally possible that this is nonetheless from Mecca, but it’s hard to tell either way. I guess it doesn’t matter much, tho.

Anyway, today’s second section concerns an entirely different topic: fetal development! Allah created humanity (Adam) from clay, “Then placed him as a drop (of seed) in a safe lodging”, ie in his mother’s womb. The “him” here appears to refer to humanity in general, since it doesn’t really make sense in the context of Adam himself. Lo! Allah needeth to work on making his pronouns clearer.

The word translated as “a drop (of seed)” here, by the way, is nutfah. This literally means a drop of liquid, and in the context of conceiving a child refers to semen. So Mohammed is saying that from Adam and Eve’s kids onwards, humans have been created by men splooging into women, thereby forming babies that grow inside their mothers. Fair enough!

The embryology lesson continues in 23:14:

Then fashioned We the drop a clot, then fashioned We the clot a little lump, then fashioned We the little lump bones, then clothed the bones with flesh, and then produced it as another creation.

So the timeline here is semen -> clot -> lump -> bones -> bones with flesh -> baby. A hadith from Sahih Bukhari elaborates:

The creation of every one of you starts with the process of collecting the material for his body within forty days and forty nights in the womb of his mother. Then he becomes a clot of thick blood for a similar period (40 days) and then he becomes like a piece of flesh for a similar period. Then an angel is sent to him (by Allah) and the angel is allowed (ordered) to write four things; his livelihood, his (date of) death, his deeds, and whether he will be a wretched one or a blessed one (in the Hereafter) and then the soul is breathed into him. 

From this, the “drop” stage lasts until day 40 or so. The “clot” stage lasts until 80 days, and the “lump” stage until 120 days. After each stage is completed, according to another hadith, an angel reports to Allah and Allah decides whether he wants the pregnancy to continue or not. After 120 days, the bone stage begins, at which point the fetus receives a soul, its destiny, and becomes “alive” in a religious sense. At least according to that. This other sahih hadith in Sahih Muslim implies something else:

When forty-two nights pass after the semen gets into the womb, Allah sends the angel and gives him shape. Then he creates his sense of hearing, sense of sight, his skin, his flesh, his bones, and then says: My Lord, would he be male or female? And your Lord decides as He desires and the angel then puts down that also and then says: My Lord, what about his age? And your Lord decides as He likes it and the angel puts it down. Then he says: My Lord, what about his livelihood? And then the Lord decides as He likes and the angel writes it down, and then the angel gets out with his scroll of destiny in his hand and nothing is added to it and nothing is subtracted from it.

Here, it seems like the fetus’ destiny is decided much earlier on--with the process starting closer to 40 days and its endpoint being left unspecified. This doesn’t explicitly have the breathing-in-soul part, but it nonetheless suggests some form of humanity or “life” is present at an early stage of pregnancy, as the fetus’ lifespan, sex, occupation, etc are all decided here.

Now you may be wondering, based on the above, how Islam in the modern era approaches abortion. The answer: it’s complicated, just like other religions. Like Jesus (one of the rare times I can use this phrase!!), Mohammed did not discuss women intentionally terminating their pregnancies anywhere, either in the Quran or in any ahadith. So Islamic jurists have had to base their opinions on everything I quoted above. Everyone agrees that after 120 days (~17 weeks), it’s not allowed, unless the mother is literally dying or the fetus itself is dying or something.

The question is whether it’s okay before that or not. Some schools of Islamic jurisprudence say it is frowned upon but allowable, at least in some circumstances, based on the Bukhari hadith. Others say it’s absolutely forbidden after 40 days, based on the Muslim hadith, but allowed before that. Still other jurists say it isn’t allowed, period, based on the prohibition against killing one’s children. So to summarize, the main positions on abortion are:

never allowed

allowed up to ~40 days

allowed up to 120 days

Which is correct? No one knows! No one can agree! There is evidence for all three opinions! You can read more about this debate here if you want, but see what happens when you bill yourself as a prophet but can’t get your stories straight... damn it Mohammed!

Anyway...! I assume it goes without saying that, uh, none of the above is an accurate description of fetal development, nor are other... curious ahadith about the topic. It is instead based on what the products of a woman’s miscarriage look like--clotted blood, small lump, identifiable fetus--at the given stages, and the designation of the 120 days point for ensoulment is due to the fact that this is the point at which fetal movement can be felt by the mother (17-18 weeks). This is called “quickening” in English, literally meaning the point at which something comes alive, so in fairness to Mohammed, he’s not the only one who thought of that.

This turned out to be a long section, so I’ll wrap it up with 23:15-16, which just says that all people die and will be raised on the Day of Resurrection. All of that is neutral I guess.

NEXT TIME: Cows! Olive oil!! Death by drowning!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 124

Ayat: 16

Good: 2 (23:3-4)

Neutral: 13 (23:1-2, 23:5, 23:7-16)

Bad: 1 (23:6)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

[salwaalkhalifa]

Staggerlee wonders by James Baldwin

1

I always wonder

what they think the niggers are doing

while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, 

are containing 

Russia  

and defining and re-defining and re-aligning 

China, 

nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile,

from blowing up that earth

which they have already 

blasphemed into dung: 

the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful

ladies, and their men,

nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam,

nostalgic for noble causes,

aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages—

ah—!

Uncas shall never leave the reservation, 

except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store.

The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: 

there is a way around every treaty.

We will turn the tides of the restless

Caribbean, 

the sun will rise, and set

on our hotel balconies as we see fit.

The natives will have nothing to complain about,

indeed, they will begin to be grateful,

will be better off than ever before. 

They will learn to defer gratification

and save up for things, like we do. 

 Oh, yes. They will.

We have only to make an offer

they cannot refuse.

 This flag has been planted on the moon:

it will be interesting to see 

what steps the moon will take to be revenged 

for this quite breathtaking presumption.

This people

masturbate in winding sheets. 

They have hacked their children to pieces. 

They have never honoured a single treaty 

made with anyone, anywhere.

The walls of their cities

are as foul as their children.

No wonder their children come at them with knives.

Mad Charlie man's son was one of their children, 

had got his shit together

by the time he left kindergarten,

and, as for Patty, heiress of all the ages,

she had the greatest vacation

of any heiress, anywhere:

 Golly-gee, whillikens, Mom, real guns!

and they come with a real big, black funky stud, too: 

oh, Ma! he's making eyes at me!

 Oh, noble Duke Wayne, 

be careful in them happy hunting grounds.

They say the only good Indian 

is a dead Indian,

by what I say is, 

you can't be too careful, you hear?

Oh, towering Ronnie Reagan,

wise and resigned lover of redwoods, 

deeply beloved, winning man-child of the yearning Republic

from diaper to football field to Warner Brothers sound-stages,

be thou our grinning, gently phallic, Big Boy of all the ages! 

 Salt peanuts, salt peanuts,

for dear hearts and gentle people, 

and cheerful, shining, simple Uncle Sam!

 Nigger, read this and run!

Now, if you can't read, 

run anyhow!

 From Manifest Destiny

(Cortez, and all his men

silent upon a peak in Darien)

to A Decent Interval,

and the chopper rises above Saigon,

abandoning the noble cause

and the people we have made ignoble

and whom we leave there, now, to die, 

one moves, With All Deliberate Speed,

to the South China Sea, and beyond, 

where millions of new niggers

await glad tidings!

 No, said the Great Man's Lady,

I'm against abortion,

I always feel that's killing somebody.

Well, what about capital punishment?

I think the death penalty helps.

 That's right.

Up to our ass in niggers

on Death Row.

 Oh, Susanna,

don't you cry for me!

  2

 Well, I guess what the niggers 

is supposed to be doing

is putting themselves in the path 

of that old sweet chariot

and have it swing down and carry us home.

 That would help, as they say,

and they got ways

of sort of nudging the chariot.

They still got influence

with Wind and Water,

though they in for some surprises

with Cloud and Fire.

 My days are not their days.

My ways are not their ways.

I would not think of them,

one way or the other,

did not they so grotesquely

block the view

between me and my brother.

 And, so, I always wonder:

can blindness be desired?

Then, what must the blinded eyes have seen

to wish to see no more!

 For, I have seen, 

in the eyes regarding me, 

or regarding my brother, 

have seen, deep in the farthest valley

of the eye, have seen

a flame leap up, then flicker and go out,

have seen a veil come down,

leaving myself, and the other,

alone in that cave

which every soul remembers, and

out of which, desperately afraid, 

I turn, turn, stagger, stumble out, 

into the healing air,

fall flat on the healing ground, 

singing praises, counselling

my heart, my soul, to praise.

 What is it that this people

cannot forget?

 Surely, they cannot be deluded

as to imagine that their crimes

are original?

 There is nothing in the least original

about the fiery tongs to the eyeballs,

the sex torn from the socket,

the infant ripped from the womb, 

the brains dashed out against rock,

nothing original about Judas,

or Peter, or you or me: nothing:

we are liars and cowards all,

or nearly all, or nearly all the time:

for we also ride the lightning,

answer the thunder, penetrate whirlwinds,

curl up on the floor of the sun,

and pick our teeth with thunderbolts.

 Then, perhaps they imagine

that their crimes are not crimes? 

 Perhaps.

Perhaps that is why they cannot repent, 

why there is no possibility of repentance.

Manifest Destiny is a hymn to madness, 

feeding on itself, ending

(when it ends) in madness: 

the action is blindness and pain,

pain bringing a torpor so deep 

that every act is willed,

is desperately forced,

is willed to be a blow: 

the hand becomes a fist,

the prick becomes a club, 

the womb a dangerous swamp,

the hope, and fear, of love

is acid in the marrow of the bone. 

No, their fire is not quenched, 

nor can be: the oil feeding the flames

being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God. 

 Yes. But let us put it in another, 

less theological way: 

though theology has absolutely nothing to do 

with what I am trying to say.

But the moment God is mentioned

theology is summoned

to buttress or demolish belief:

an exercise which renders belief irrelevant

and adds to the despair of Fifth Avenue 

on any afternoon, 

the people moving, homeless, through the city,

praying to find sanctuary before the sky 

and the towers come tumbling down, 

before the earth opens, as it does in Superman.

They know that no one will appear

to turn back time, 

they know it, just as they know

that the earth has opened before 

and will open again, just as they know

that their empire is falling, is doomed,

nothing can hold it up, nothing.

We are not talking about belief. 

  3

 I wonder how they think

the niggers made, make it, 

how come the niggers are still here. 

But, then, again, I don't think they dare

to think of that: no: 

I'm fairly certain they don't think of that at all.

 Lord, 

I with the alabaster lady of the house, 

with Beulah.

Beulah about sixty, built in four-square, 

biceps like Mohammed Ali,

she at the stove, fixing biscuits, 

scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee, 

pouring juice, and the lady of the house,

she say, she don't know how

she'd get along without Beulah

and Beulah just silently grunts,

I reckon you don't,

and keeps on keeping on

and the lady of the house say

She's just like one of the family,

and Beulah turns, gives me a look, 

sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes

in the direction of the lady's back, and

keeps on keeping on. 

 While they are containing 

Russia

and entering onto the quicksand of 

China

and patronizing

Africa, 

and calculating

the Caribbean plunder, and

the South China Sea booty, 

the niggers are aware that no one has discussed 

anything at all with the niggers. 

 Well. Niggers don't own nothing,

got no flag, even our names 

are hand-me-downs

and you don't change that 

by calling yourself X:

sometimes that just makes it worse, 

like obliterating the path that leads back

to whence you came, and 

to where you can begin. 

And, anyway, none of this changes the reality, 

which is, for example, that I do not want my son 

to die in Guantanamo, 

or anywhere else, for that matter, 

serving the Stars and Stripes. 

(I've seen some stars.

I got some stripes.) 

 Neither (incidentally)

has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers:

the incoherent feeling is, the less

the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better: 

the lady of the house

smiles nervously in your direction

as though she had just been overheard

discussing family, or sexual secrets, 

and changes the subject to Education, 

or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls, 

the smile saying, Don't be dismayed.

We know how you feel. You can trust us.

 Yeah. I would like to believe you.

But we are not talking about belief.

  4

 The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder,

are approaching the end of their journey: 

it is amazing that they approach without wonder, 

as though they have, themselves, become

that scorched and blasphemed earth, 

the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes, 

the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain,

the famine, the silence, the children's eyes, 

murder masquerading as salvation, seducing

every democratic eye,

the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton, 

rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia,

the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces, 

hey! the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller

     nieces,

and Tom's black prick hacked off

to rustle in crinoline, 

to hang, heaviest of heirlooms,

between the pink and alabaster breasts

of the Great Man's Lady,

or worked into the sash at the waist

of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece,

a chunk of shining brown-black satin,

staring, staring, like the single eye of God:

 creation yearns to re-create a time

when we were able to recognize a crime. 

 Alas, 

my stricken kinsmen, 

the party is over: 

there have never been any white people, 

anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors—

look: where is your image now? 

where your inheritance, 

on what rock stands this pride?

 Oh, 

I counsel you, 

leave History alone.

She is exhausted, 

sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror,

and wondering what rabbit, now, 

to pull out of what hat, 

and seriously considering retirement, 

even though she knows her public

dare not let her go.

 She must change. 

Yes. History must change. 

A slow, syncopated

relentless music begins

suggesting her re-entry,

transformed, virginal as she was,

in the Beginning, untouched, 

as the Word was spoken, 

before the rape which debased her

to be the whore of multitudes, or, 

as one might say, before she became the Star, 

whose name, above our title, 

carries the Show, making History the patsy,

responsible for every flubbed line, 

every missed cue, responsible for the life

and death, of all bright illusions

and dark delusions,

Lord, History is weary

of her unspeakable liaison with Time, 

for Time and History

have never seen eye to eye: 

Time laughs at History

and time and time and time again

Time traps History in a lie.

 But we always, somehow, managed

to roar History back onstage

to take another bow,

to justify, to sanctify

the journey until now. 

 Time warned us to ask for our money back, 

and disagreed with History

as concerns colours white and black.

Not only do we come from further back,

but the light of the Sun

marries all colours as one. 

 Kinsmen, 

I have seen you betray your Saviour

(it is you who call Him Saviour) 

so many times, and

I have spoken to Him about you, 

behind your back. 

Quite a lot has been going on 

behind your back, and, 

if your phone has not yet been disconnected, 

it will soon begin to ring: 

informing you, for example, that a whole generation, 

in Africa, is about to die, 

and a new generation is about to rise,

and will not need your bribes, 

or your persuasions, any more: 

not your morality. No plundered gold—

Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see

the crime is not what you have done to me!

It is you who are blind, 

you, bowed down with chains, 

you, whose children mock you, and seek another 

master,

you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the 

eye,

whose sleep is blank with terror, 

for whom love died long ago,

somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit

box,

the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks, 

you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro

and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras 

and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and

leopards

and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers, 

flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the 

grace of God,

passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush, 

thicker, oh, than honey in the hive, 

dripping

dripping

opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom

to spine, 

sweet heaven on the line

to last forever, yes, 

but, now, 

rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay, 

your innocence costs too much

and we can't carry you on our books

or our backs, any longer: baby,

find another Eden, another apple tree,

somewhere, if you can, 

and find some other natives, somewhere else,

to listen to you bellow

till you come, just like a man, 

but we don't need you,

are sick of being a fantasy to feed you, 

and of being the principal accomplice to your

crime: 

for, it is your crime, now, the cross to which you

cling, 

your Alpha and Omega for everything. 

 Well (others have told you)

your clown's grown weary, the puppet master

is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster, 

and is long gone, does not belong to you, 

any more than my woman, or my child, 

ever belonged to you. 

 During this long travail

our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, 

and we tried to make you hear life in our song

but now it matters not at all to me 

whether you know what I am talking about—or not:

I know why we are not blinded

by your brightness, are able to see you, 

who cannot see us. I know 

why we are still here. 

 Godspeed. 

The niggers are calculating, 

from day to day, life everlasting, 

and wish you well: 

but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning, 

and rule in Hell.