Poem of William Hermanns

                        Oh Francis

I walk through life and fall and fall.
I do not choose my misery
as you once chose, my holy friend.

I am not you, don't feel the call.
I live, let live, pay life my fee.
I love and pray, yet I am bent

beneath the cross and fall to perish.
My cross, your cross, I'm whipped to drag
toward doom. hopes for life eclipse.

Am I born God's child to love and cherish
creation or born a curse in a carnal bag
to be devoured by the Apocalypse?

You have Christ's wounds on hands and feet.
You raised your pierced hand, blessing me.
Why do I breathe a scarlet breath

lashed by man's greed until I meet
my end and have no guarantee
that there's a heaven after death?

I close my eyes and stop to think.
I feel as though an initiation
to holiness takes place within.
It speaks, "Your conscience owns creation.

Your conscience is your heaven now,
because God lives in it. I, too.
You doubt and ask, 'What's after death?'
Act now as though you knew."

                               William Hermanns      [P324]