Have Mercy Poem by Daniel Brick

Have mercy on us.
We live piecemeal lives,
assembled out of fragments
we find scattered haphazardly
on the long roads we ceaselessly
wander. Can such incompleteness
ever triumph? Can you make us whole?

Have mercy on us.
We are forever completing
the work of evolution...
By now, we should have wings
and fly freely over many landscapes:
ports of call, homes away from homes,
Eldorados, safe harbors, treasure islands,
green plateaus, fields of the Lord,
lanes redolent with flower aromas
suffused in sunlight, Eden redux.

Have mercy on us.
We have yet to learn how to
to live together. We cannot
stomach each other. We accuse
our other selves of cannibalism,
sloth, idolatry, abominations.
And when we look through a window
at the green world beyond these bars,
we are startled when the window
suddenly becomes a mirror
and we see a face staring at us
twisted with hate, pockmarked
with greed. We can feel our disease.

Have mercy on us.
We meant no harm really,
when hundreds perished beneath the sword,
when thousands went hungry and died
before the new harvest arrived,
when millions were neglected and lived out
their short, brutish, nasty lives...
Oh, this weight of history we must carry,
this burden of hope and despair
that has become a hunchback
lodged in our bodies. We, who once dreamed
of beauty, who once dreamed of pride of being,
we, who...

Have mercy on us.
We are no less worthy
than you are. We just lack
the power to make our wishes
real. Let there be light indeed,
let it shine in all the crevices,
over the murky waters of origin,
into our deepest soul-space, where
yet something may blossom that knows
only the good, the true, the beautiful.

Oh, we demand more than mercy:
Give us a new being, complete,
fully empowered to make of this world
a shining place, a garden, a life everlasting.

Until then... Have mercy on us.