'Buna' by Primo Levi

Torn feet and cursed earth,
The long line in the gray morning.
The Buna smokes from a thousand chimneys,
A day like every other day awaits us.
The whistles terrible at dawn:
‘You multitudes with dead faces,
On the monotonous horror of the mud
Another day of suffering is born.’
Tired companion, I see you in my heart.
I read your eyes, sad friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothing.
You have broken what’s left of the courage within you. Colorless one, you were a strong man,
A woman walked at your side.
Empty companion who no longer has a name, Forsaken man who can no longer weep,
So poor you no longer grieve,
So tired you no longer fear.
Spent once-strong man.
If we were to meet again
Up there in the world, sweet beneath the sun,
With what kind of face would we confront each other?

28 December 1945

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Varieties of Irreligious Experience

https://newhumanist.org.uk/2657/varieties-of-irreligious-experience

'The Coming' by R.S. Thomas

And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows: a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said.

'Here hangs a man discarded' by Brian Wren

A Hymn by Brian Wren to the tune 'Kocher' Here hangs a man discarded, a scarecrow hoisted high, a nonsense pointing nowhere to all who hurry by. Can such a clown of sorrows still bring a useful word when faith and hope seem phantoms and every hope absurd? Yet here is help and comfort for lives by comfort bound, when drums of dazzling progress give strangely hollow sound: Life, emptied of all meaning, drained out in bleak distress, can share in broken silence our deepest emptiness; And love that freely entered the pit of life's despair, can name our hidden darkness and suffer with us there. Christ, in our darkness risen, help all who long for light to hold the hand of promise, till faith receives its sight.

Fides Quaerens Albus

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