SUFFERING HOSANNA (MY CREED)

                      Suffering.
                      Supposed to be ennobling.
                      "Suffer in silence":
                      Blood transmutes golden.
                      I wish to hell
		      That philosophical hack
                      Were manacled to his rhetorical rack!
                      His eyes locked into a little girl's eyes.
                      Can he ground out that cant
                      While she sighs --
                                         and cries --
                                                       and dies?

                      Frustration --
                      Fobbed off as "education".
                      Look at old Sisyphus:
                      Tumbling down hell
                      With the rest uf us.
                      Ask any dung-beetle:
                      It's all in a dirty day's work.
                      The kind of shi----ft you'd rather shirk.
                      WELL, what's so magnificent
                      In maundering manure?
                      Do you really believe
                      We can be schooled in a sewer?

                      Still --
                      Nit-picking can be petty
                      And unbecoming.
                      (Like nose-picking.)
                      I wasn't funning.
                      But wooden words
                      May be misunderstood.
                      
                      Do you mean "suffering" --
                      The kind that you can't prevent?
                      But, after the tract,
                      When griefs relent.
                      A little child's pain
                      Should hype your brain:
                      Love's ounce of remembrance
                      For those that remain.

                      It's the age-old plaint
                      Of Theodicy.
                      If there is a God,
                      How can suffering be?
                      
                      But my Stewardhip's not
                      To pick God's brain.
                      I ken to anticipate
                      Some of the pain.
                      To guard the sheepfold.
                      Plug the dyke.
                      Ground the spire
                      From lightning's strike.
                      
                      God busies my hands
                      When crisis glowers.
                      I time the storm
                      In strides of hours.

                      Being is Doing
                      In time of suffering.
                      If I can do,
                      I can last.
                      That this time, too,
                      Shall pass.

                      And that's why I say --
                      And that's why I say --
                      And that's why I SAY --

                      HOSANNA
                      In the height of suffering!

                      HOSANNA
                      In the height of suffering!

                      HOSANNA
                      In the height of suffering!

                      HOSANNA
                      In the height of suffering!

                      HOSANNA
                      In the height of suffering!

                      HOSANNA
                      In the .......