(written for Father Coady of Antigonish, NS, Canada)

Now when lona College 
sent Mike O'Malley down 
to talk to the Red local', 
the miners swarmed to town; 
inquisitorially hard, 
each proudly bearing his red card, 
Mike was the only priest they knew 
and liked enough to listen to; 
not that they cared much what he'd say, 
but, differing from him, night from day, 
they washed, and walked the cindered mile 
to see God's friendship in his smile, 
God's anger in his frown.

"My hate is no less hot than yours but better aimed," he said, 
"Mine warring on the living foe, yours burying the dead."

They knew the man was honest 
as a loaf of whole-grain bread 
but they wondered at the curious things 
in Mike O'Malley's head.

"Your mine runs down here by the sea, 
beneath the sea as well, 
miles down and more miles out 
under the rolling swell that rides the Ram Rock overhead . . . 
I can recall days not long dead 
when you men far beneath the blue 
would listen and let on that you 
could hear the Ram Rock bell. 
Your bodies sweating there below, 
your minds would swim and fly 
with fins that stirred the sea's floor 
as the halibut skulked by, 
with keels that chalked the rising wave, 
with wings that churned the sky.

"Who caught those leaping minds of yours 
and haltered them with hate, 
and herded their wild fancies 
to reason's tame estate?
Who was it came and fenced you all 
with dialectic for a wall, 
and said, 'Go look!' and gouged your eye, 
and clipped your wing and said, 'Go fly!' 
and closed the nine-barred gate?

"Who broke the winged steed of your thought 
to drag the weary hack
through 'equal' sings that bog its wheels 
deep in their endless track, 
disproving everything away 
and proving nothing back?

"I've heard your young men say, 'Okay, 
we don't believe in much!  
We walk alone . . . as for the Cross, 
we've cast away that crutch!'

"And so they've cut their closest kin, 
their cuisle chridh' - the One Within, 
whose pulse would warm the frozen hand 
and nerve the tongue to understand 
the things they taste and touch.

"They say that far too slowly 
the old gods ground their grist, 
and the only way they'll ever get 
the world their fathers missed 
is to hate-fuse together 
their fingers to a fist and hammer, hammer, hammer, 
to break the brutal foe 
who fattens his spoiled children 
on the bread of their children's woe . . .

"But what's to happen after? 
What like will be their laughter, 
when hate has flayed the human mask? 
These are the things they seldom ask, 
for they seem not to know . . .

"The Devil has no trouble 
inding his proper tool, 
but they who help the Devil 
are but the Devil's fool, 
and they who do the work of Hell 
shall have Hell for their rule. 
He hammers not, but hollows; 
with gouges he destroys;
with shoddy tunes that shred the nerves; 
with cleverness that cloys 
he cataracts the inner eye 
against what money cannot buy . . . 
Staking the limit of your need 
to measure of your master's greed, 
staring at his toys;
when you have seen a fortuned man 
and envied him his prize 
of lifted littleness that puffs 
and bloats and gathers flies, 
that envy is the 'foe' you missed -
it looks out of your eyes!

"Let fall the scales of legal lust 
that weigh the linnet's wing! 
Grow out, outgrow the teetering tomes 
and let your balance swing 
upon the twin-branched Aspen Tree, 
the Acted Word that sets you free 
to listen to the linnet's song, 
lilting that all but love is wrong, 
for only love can sing; 
for only love can build a nest, 
and only love can spread 
rich hunger on your table, 
sweet rest upon your bed."

Uneasily they lit their pipes 
turning his words around 
finding the roots of them too soft 
for their hard Marxist ground.

Then Angus Cameron took the floor 
for song. He voiced the bitter thrall 
of the sad Fuadach nan Gaedheal 
and the old clan wrong 
blocked in their minds once more:

The factor's ban, 
the crofter wild, 
the spitted man, 
the trampled child, 
the bursted latch, 
the cai I leach's curse, 
the blazing thatch. 
The broken dream, 
to swell the purse 
of a greedy scheme.
No Sassenach this blood-stained thief -
their very kin, their father-chief! 
His clan undone 
that sheep might run.

A song of no rebellion, of accepted sorrow; 
no challenge in it, no hope of a changed tomorrow, 
and at the start, not angry; at the end still sad 
for those poor children of the Gael 
heartsick and homesick for the brown sail,
for the croft and runrig, for the nets drying, 
grey gulls wheeling forever and crying.

The long note died ...but still his voice 
with music as with meaning rang 
for always what he sang, he said, 
and what he said, he sang.

"That, as you know, is our own song 
a hymn of sorrow for the soul 
to water down a cruel wrong 
to a brew that we could thole. 
Ay but we watered it too deep 
rusting the iron from its heart, 
lulling the hate in it to sleep.

"Then, faces screwed to hunger's pain, 
we chorused brave and rarely, 
and dotted our bonnets in the rain, 
with 'Wae's me for Prince Charlie!' 
We should have blushed for very shame 
to hear the Forty Five extolled 
that set the lairdie's pride of name 
against the merchant's pride of gold.

"When hunger slacked its final notch, 
to eat we kenneled with the hounds 
of Cumberland: we joined the 'Watch'. 
To eat we piped the bloody rounds 
of Empire toted Geordie's chain 
across the seas and back again. 
With oatmeal porridge in the pot 
with kilts and crying pipes they caught 
the hungry sentimental Scot! 
A bit of colored yarn the lure 
for silly fish and simple poor.

"So everywhere the world around 
with tinsel thongs we slaves are bound. 
And that, God's messenger, is why 
we weigh your words before we buy.

"Worms, grubs and insects die 
to feed your tuneful linnet's cry. 
Paid not the Man of Nazareth 
this cosmic wrong with shameful death? 
For kindness what was his reward? 
What answer to his love outpoured? 
What city handed him its key? 
What college offered its degree? 
What church . . . the less said there the better! 
This gracious man, this cosmic debtor 
who squared the debt so men could see 
their hero helpless on a tree 
and know that God Himself goes through 
the same sad toils that poor men do; 
was this man not a hated man 
scorned by all the proper people? 
Is he not still that hated man 
especially by the steeple people?

"But men there are, and they grow many, 
who've spurned the 'charity' that freezes 
for comradeship would gladden any 
poor deified-rejected Jesus. 
We could salute that little rabbi 
who used a story like 'oor Rab'; he 
double-barbed the point and when 
he pressed it home it stayed, nor alt 
your commentators, theologians, 
quite got it out again. That's why 
your Master could be our own man 
except His name is in the mouths 
of all those 'holy' murderers 
he spoke against and lived against 
and threw his life away against . . . 
Perhaps, good friend, 
these words of mine offend."
The priest smiled no, and then he said, 
spreading wide his giant hand 
to smooth the hair back on his head, 
"I think that we might understand 
each other could we shake the gremlin 
pride in Christendom and Kremlin; 
pride of spirit, pride of mind,
keep both mind and spirit blind.
"Your words leave flattery unpaid 
I wouldn't have you call one back 
though I might add one bit they lack 
of boldness. Why are you so afraid 
to claim that Rabbi for your own? 
Call him no name except the one he knew, 
Yeshua, the name his mother called him. 
Throw twenty centuries of barren wrangling 
into the discard, for the man is yours, 
and you, in the deep heart of you, are his. 
He needs you, hand and brain, and above all 
he needs the fire in you to fight the cold, 
the glacial ice that spreads, not as of old 
across the earth, but in the hearts of men.

"If cross for you is but a crutch, 
if Christ's a rabbit's foot you touch for luck, 
then you have done right well 
to shed them for your honest hell, 
your grim revolt, your hard despair; 
I'd follow even down to there; 
I do; I'm with you, and I burn 
in social anger, and I learn 
your honor, your quick sense of shame 
at loveless things done in love's name. 
But if I learn from you, then you 
may learn from me a thing or two. 
There is a law beneath all laws, 
'tis even the cause of your own cause, 
the dignity that's in each man; 
no other forces him or can. 
Tho every power of heaven and earth demand he move, 
he moves but at his own command.

"So we must watch and we must wait 
outside each lonely human gate. 
Authority within the soul 
was never let from God's control, 
and even He walks lightly there 
whistling by with casual air 
wooing gently from within; 
so we must shun the deadly sin 
against the Spirit Innermost 
to whom each soul is awe-full host.

"When men perceive what Mind they think from 
and sense the Life whose life they live
and greet with love the Source they drink from 
then will they easily forgive 
past infamies that now they shrink from, 
and learn that force and violence 
are alien to the human sense, 
that even justice must be led 
lest private wars be all she'd know 
and tit-for-tat with tedious tread 
her endless circles she would go.

"You've heard the saying, love is blind, 
yet since the world's nativity 
of all its powers, mud or mind, 
'tis love and only love can see!"

Now they had fixed a banner 
above O'Malley's head, 
the banner had no legend, 
it was a bloody red.