Poem of William Hermanns

                            Under the Shirt

Don't lift my shirt to find what is beneath.
There is my heart that beat through thousand passions
and changed my flesh to a voracious tramp.

There are my lungs, when young, condemned to breathe
the songs of hate to please the fist that fashions
the war so chosen few can buy their golden lamp.

You find beneath my shirt the body of a fool.
I thought that God has chosen those who rule.

But what's beneath your shirt? Come, lift it up.
I see, your life is too a wanton beast of lust.
Your prayers but a lightning rod for greed:

"Christ, I come Sundays, share your precious cup.
Six days I speak to life, 'Take it or bust.'
On earth it is not I who has to bleed."

Let's drop the curtain of our mysterious shirt
and resurrect our soul from ego's dirt.

Come, friend, help set the muffled conscience free,
jailed by the church-gang's creed, "I'm better than you."
My conscience has as creed, "Infinite love,"
embracing aeons of eternity.


                                     William Hermanns           [P329]