I have drunk to the dregs
The blood of my dead.
I splutter and choke
On the gore
That they pour.
I have drunk to the dregs
From the cup I’ve been fed.
The blood – so much blood – cries out from the sand:
Murder! Desist! Lift your hand! Lift your hand!
Mercy! Compassion! Stop profaning the land!
Lift up your voices, my children, and weep
and howl because life’s become so cheap.
Licentiousness, violence, disease plague the land,
Laying waste what was planted by His mighty Hand.
These locusts inexorably press on and on,
Reaping, depleting, they scuttle along.
Repent! Your transgression has reached to the sky:
there’s mercy for you, just look up on High.
Carnage on roadways – statistics just grow,
The blood and the tears cease not to flow.
Heartbreak and sorrow and bitter regret:
What if? and Why not? and Why did they so?
It’s just woe after woe after woe after woe.
Mourn for my unborn, cheated of time.
Grieve for my children cut down in their prime
Bewail the fate of all victims of crime.
The land is distressed
She weeps in the night.
Softly she mournfully croons out her plight.
She cradles all who fall to the scourge
For them she sings her plaintive dirge.
She’s been defiled – she’s drenched in blood
A never-ending crimson flood.
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