NIGHT WATCHMAN

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight.

A sheltered child, I sleep secure, content;

No swordlike, piercing pain of tortured folk

On lonely sickbeds stabs my sovereign skin;

I sense no anguished dread in dying hearts.

No tattered waifs from Africa besmudge

My windows with their dirty hands, or peer

Inside with hungry eyes that plead for love.

Yet they crowd around Your windows looking in!

No cursed untouchables on Bombay streets

Beg leave to make my lawn their bed tonight.

I hear no heartsick sob in vice-cursed haunt,

Nor curdling scream of suicide's dark leap,

Nor soldier's pain-racked gasp in alien land.

I sense no shock of riven flesh in crash

On bloody road. I cannot even surmise

The reason for my next-door neighbor's tears!

But through the starlit hours You may not sleep.

You dare not look the other way, avert Your gaze.

You watch each twitch of pain, and count

Our sighs, Yours the helpless agony

To feel our universal tragedy.

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight—

But is there something I might do to help?

—Robert J. Wieland

Foreward — by Donald K. Short | Read Chapter 1 — A FAX Direct From Heaven