Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

Page 29 text:

Lord, Why Dia' You Tell Me To Lord, why did you tell me to love all men, my brothers? I have tried, but I come back to you, frightened . . . Lord, I was so peaceful at home, I was so comfortably settled. I was well-furnished, and I felt cozy. I was alone, I was at peace, Sheltered from the wind and the rain, kept clean. I would have stayed unsullied in my ivory tower. But, Lord, you have discovered a breach in my defenses. You have forced me to open my door. Like a squall of rain in the face, the cry of men has awakened me: Like a gale of wind a friendship has shaken me, Stealing in like a shaft of light, your grace has disturbed me. Rashly enough, I left my door ajar. Now, Lord, I am lost! Outside, men were lying in wait for me. I did not know they were so nearg in this house, in this street. in this officeg my neighbor, my colleague, my friend. As soon as I started to open the door I saw them, with outstretched hands, anxious eyes, longing hearts, like beggars on church steps. The first came in, Lord. There was, after all, a bit of space in my heart. I welcomed them. I would have cared for them and fondled them, my very own little lambs, my little flock. You would have been pleased, Lord, I would have served and honoured you in a proper, respectable way. Until then, it was sensible . . . But the next ones, Lord, the other men e I had not seen themg they were hidden behind the first ones. There were more of them. They were wretched: they overpowered me without warning. We had to crowd in, I had to find room for them. Now they have come from all over in successive waves, pushing one another. jostling one another. They have come from all over town, from all parts of the country, of the worldg numberless, inexhaustible. They don't come alone any longer but in groups, bound one to another. They come bending under heavy loads, loads of injustice, of resentment and hate, of suffering and sin . . . They drag the world behind them, with everything rusted, twisted, badly adjusted. L0 ve? twen ty- Eve

Page 28 text:

Day by day the earth revolves, Beneath the great unblinking eye. Its path a maze to solve. Man solved it once and by and by He left his planet, where it lay An unsolved twisted maze, Poisoned by his unfinished stay. LU?-Cycle He was born He lived in the slums He went to school He learned to hate To hate himself, to hate his friends His son was born His son lived in the glass mansion He went to no school He learned to love To love his friends, to love himself To love his neighbours His father killed him because he loved His father died because he knew no love. Yet he always returns from the trails he blazes Back to the unseen dying womb. twenty-four The sun rose casting forth its light, Dispelling the shadows of the nightg For awhile love for all was right, But again the sun sank out of sight. Love was replaced by distrust and hate, Uncertainty became man's awful fate. The shadows of the night conquer the great And when the sun rises it may be too late.

Page 30 text:

Iwwltuvesix Lord, they hurt me! They are in the way, they are all over. They are too hungry, they are consuming me! l can't do anything any moreg as they come in, they push the door, and the door opens wider. . . Ah, Lord! my door is wide open! I can't stand it any more! lt's too much! lt's no kind of a life! What about my job? My family? My peace? My liberty? And me? Ah, Lord! l have lost everything, l don't belong to myself any longer, There's no more room for me at home. Don't worry, God says, you have gained all. While men came in to you, l, your Father. l, your God, Slipped in among them. The Refugee As the cool, silent breezes beekon to ancient dawn And, up on a mountaintop, a wintry gale moans While the last war cries bitterly once again, reverberating among the dry canyons and dead streams. I wait in frustration. Far, far away from the Fords, Chevrolets and Triumphs, A child's lost, hungry wail echoes from its cave of suffoeation And remains unheeded in these stark and dry riverbeds that will always be soaked in dead dreams ofa past history . . . The tents of refugees shimmer and crumble in the baked valley of stone, devoured by twisting tortured blizzards of Hell, as roaring, scrcechingjets cover and disturb the pounding noisy silence of the last canyon walls, throwing a blazing path of ecstasy, dark trails of crimson, from horizon to horizon and from cliff to cliff. All this lies as a relTection in the mirror of the Book of Reckoning. A cold-blooded trembling rage cxpectantly surges on through the endless hurricanes of time in this rock-strewn desert. . . . l await a resurrection. Anon