O Lord of the Unswept Road

by Séamas Carraher

O Lord of the unswept road
O unwashed Lord of the broken brick
and the graffiti wall
where something needs to be said
but never is,
i have little care left
living in a leaking house
where the warmth and the heart and
the soul
have been bled
drop by drop
little by little
on rent day
and bin-tax day and
in the long nights when the faces
around me sleep
and what could be beautiful is troubled.
O Lord of the heart that is numb
and the angry faces,
O Lord of the life that is half finished
yet unlived,
O Lord of love where only fear
reigns and
the only hope there is
sits warming its hands round the television
and the children litter the streets
like weeds
unwashed and unloved.
O Lord of the silence
when this strong man sits and talks
and watches it all leave
in sickness and pain
and the darkness without grief
pins your eyelids open
for the hurt and the fear.
O Lord of all the unwashed streets
in these places without name,
Lord of ghetto and police siren,
Lord of the ineffective
where words have their wings broken
and even the streetsigns snarl.
O Lord of the hurt when
everyone now sleeps
in the womb of what never is:
this song like a prayer
for what will rise
in the Easter-time
of unloved lives…

This cry of the wretched.