Let Their Cry go up to Heaven

Let their cry go up to Heaven!

Let the earth hear it;

Let the sea stand still in its writhing,

To gather in their tears.

Let the clouds weep in sympathy

Upon this thirsting soil.

Let the grass blades supplicate,

And the sun scorch our clamour to silence,

So that we might hear their cry.

Let their cry go up to Heaven!

Let the angels pause to listen,

Lifting up the terrible pain.

Transmuting it to glory

As only Love can do.

There shall be a day of reckoning.

Let their cry go up to Heaven:

The broken and the tortured,

The disregarded, robbed of human worth

(Precious beyond our counting),

The misused, the throwaway people,

Thrown away, like rusted-up spare parts,

Or viewed as merely vermin

By some cold, Satanic glaze,

The sneered-at, the despised ones, who crawl with broken hearts:

Let their cry go up to Heaven.

Let their cry go up to Heaven!

Strip our ears

From the self-talk of our comfort,

Our cotton wool pretences,

The Machiavellian melodies

That politics sings loud.

Let us kneel down in the dust

And join our tears to theirs!

Let their cry go up to Heaven!