Shadows of Yearning
An Oratorio
Chorus
Jesus
Priest
Lawyer
Farmer
Kings of the Earth
Weaver-Women
Bodhisattva
CHORUS: Hear the word of the Lord Incarnate
Made a man in Palestine;
Read in letters of gold and silver
Across the land from hill to brine
The Gospel of the distant saudade
Eternal on the lily-shore
Hear the words that shook the Temple
BODHI.: That Man and God may not be sundered
The wheels of Heaven spun on Earth.
FARMER: That labour dreary be not fruitless
Mary in the cave gave birth.
She laid Him in a manger where
The oxen feed on hay.
BODHI.: To ward the snow and wind from Him
She toiled night and day.
Surely mankind has been ungrateful:
Sangha, family, Church he’s failed
Furiously he’s tried to cover
A face that never can be veiled.
FARMER: All around him worlds are whirling
Adam’s delving while Eve spins
BODHI.: And in that threefold whirl of Spirit
FARMER: Surely all things groan with sins.
You who have rejected Heaven
That the dust might have it first
Tell us Lord God’s revelation
Of the days when Time shall burst.
BODHI.: High amidst the clouds of Heaven
Birds will sing and airplanes sore
While beneath the clouds of Heaven
The World rejects the Word all the more.
FARMER: Planting beets and pulling carrots
I sang Jizo’s hymns for the pre-born.
Walking ‘neath my rooves and garrets
Hands chapped and cracked, fingertips torn
I heard the Jizo and the Jesus
Statues sitting in the snow
Singing, ‘All things now on fire
‘Shall be rescued from below.’
BODHI.: Exalt the senses and their concepts!
Save the devilish human soul!
We do not wish for anything
To happen—but even so, make all whole!
CHORUS: Hear the questions of the sinners sighing in their paper room.
Here they are, hopeless and broken like a time-dashed bamboo broom.
Their worried ecstasies of eternity yearn for some way to break free.
There they sit and there they suffer, this they hear and that they see.
LAWYER: Justice and law I’ve upheld life-long
Of lost causes I’ve taken none.
Sinners in peril, the obviously guilty—
Such cases could never be won.
The priest and the Levite should put up a real fight
Or else their careers will be done.
PRIEST: A gay guy called Ronald who came by the parish
Asked me for my blessing and love.
Of course I refused—such folk can’t be trusted
Either on Earth or above.
I love king and country; I love law and duty
Such things are far more than some dove.
KING: I’ll fund that project, order that development
Have foreign forests cut down for cash here.
Commerce has control; their virtues I’ll extol
So long as they’re paying me every sixth year.
I first ran for my seat and won in a dead heat
Without them, but now I am quite in the clear.
CHORUS: Kyrie
BODHI.: Eleison
LAWYER: But
PRIEST: last night
KING: I went abed
LAWYER: A dismal
PRIEST: headache
KING: I had.
LAWYER: I called for
PRIEST: my wife and
KING: I called for
LAWYER: A doctor
PRIEST: and then for
KING: my dead
Mom and dad.
I have to ask all sorts of things
I never really did before.
FARMER: Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
KING: What does the future hold
After this chapter closes?
Why ought I mass up cash
If it blooms and dies like roses?
Will I awaken in
A world that has cast off others?
Will it become my Hell
Since I have destroyed my brothers?
W-W.: Do you hate the poor, the oppressed, the weak of the Earth
On account of their weakness?
Good; then that is their last vote of confidence in you.
As long as you hate the weak because they are weak
Your form will not be lost forever
And you will be kept there sane to suffer and not dissolve
Into the Flames of Glozé.
CHORUS: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison, eleison imas!
W-W.: Keep the ‘you’ you think you are
Let yourself not
Be made woof or weft of.
Just remember that you could be carried far
If you would just let
God start where He left off.
Your will could be brought out
In a shining thread
Among the thousand threads
Of a shining tapestry
To adorn the highest realms
While days shall be.
JESUS: I was an hungred and—
FARMER: Ye gave me no meat!
JESUS: I was thirsty and—
FARMER: Ye gave me no drink!
JESUS: I was a stranger and—
FARMER: Ye took me not in!
JESUS: I was naked and—
FARMER: Ye clothed me not!
JESUS: I was sick and in prison and—
FARMER: Ye visited me not!
KING: May I feed you
Make this right?
May I sup you
Make this right?
May I shelter you
Make this right?
May I clothe you
Make this right?
May I visit you
Make this right?
What can I ever
How can I ever
Wherewith should I ever
Make this thing right?
JESUS: Work on yourself.
FARMER: Work for others.
W-W.: Then the gateless gate shall open for thee.
FARMER: Be good to the downtrodden.
JESUS: They also are your family.
W-W.: Then the ox-herders shall stand for thee..
Comes the love surpassing country
Surpassing kingship and its power.
Comes the love that transforms family
Transforms friends and finds your flower.
Comes the love that makes your circle
Widen to embrace the world.
Comes the love that weaves existence
Into the flags we see unfurled.
Is it the current that bears existence
On its softly bounding wave?
Is it the cloth that draws the current
Salvific, saving and to save?
It is the thought that this is what matters
That makes you someone truly brave.
LAWYER: What does my future hold?
Shall I be forgiven?
Have I been scared straight
On to the path to Heaven?
JESUS: The path will open when your fear ossifies.
When your mercenary desire to save your skin flies
And in its place the mask becomes real
And on your heart sets down the seal
That says—‘compassion all my days
‘I did, and not for my own praise’
Then the gate will open
And then I will let you in.
PRIEST: What does my future hold?
Whence cometh all this crying?
Do I deserve this comfort
In a world where the poor are sighing?
CHORUS: Do you deserve this comfort
KING: Do I deserve this comfort
BODHI.: Do you deserve this comfort
LAWYER: Do I deserve this comfort
W-W.: Do you deserve this comfort
PRIEST: Do I deserve this
LAWYER: Do I do I
KING: Do I deserve
PRIEST: This comfort
LAWYER: comfort
PRIEST: Have we earned comfort? Have we earned riches?
LAWYER: Can one earn comfort? Can one earn riches?
KING: Is there any comfort? Are there any riches?
LAWYER: Do I do I
Is there are there
Have we have we
Can one can one
Do we do we
CHORUS: No-no-no-no-no!
KING: We don’t deserve this comfort
We haven’t earned these riches
We haven’t got true comfort
We don’t know true riches
K,L,P.: We haven’t earned this comfort
While the innocent are dying.
We shouldn’t have these riches
In a world where the poor are sighing!
CHORUS: You are bones. You are bones. All you, all you, all you bones.
Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones.
Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones.
JESUS: Shall these bones live? Shall these bones live?
Have these bones what it takes to truly live?
The sense of time and the tasks at hand
The love it takes to make measure of a man
Is it here within these hearts?
Feelest thou the pain that smarts
The souls of the righteous when they think
On how the impoverished ones might sink?
KING: I do not know.
CHORUS: God only knows!
KING: Can that be?
CHORUS: God only knows!
BODHI.: Pale apple blossoms in a rain of blood…
W-W.: Pale apple blossoms in a rain of blood…
KING: Are we the blossoms or are we the blood?
Blossoms or blood?—Apples in the rain
Are we the blossoms or are we the blood?
CHORUS: God only knows!
KING: What is it we can see from here? Should we be in a hurry?
CHORUS: God only knows!
KING: Where is England? Where is Kent? Where is Canterbury?
CHORUS: God only knows!
LAWYER: What is my true face?
Is it here or in the realm of hungry ghosts?
CHORUS: God only knows!
PRIEST: How can I reach down
To touch the threefold whirl of spirits?
CHORUS: God only knows!
KING: How are we to survive?
Will the Son of Man return too late?
CHORUS: God only knows!
Oh Lord, how many are thy works!
All of them thou hast wrought
In wisdom: With thy plenteous store
The Earth is fully fraught.
So is this great and spacious sea
Wherein things creeping be
Beyond all number: Beasts of small
And of great quantity.
There go the ships: Leviathan
Therein thou madst to play.
These all wait on thee, that their meat
In their time give thou may.
BODHI.: In the Buddha lands of the ten ways
There is of course but one vehicle.
Bright and clear, no other way:
How could we lose it or gain it?
Even when we gain it, it is nothing new to us
Even when we think we lose it, we have hidden it close by.
Just look for the jewel in the seam of your robe!
Look, look, see all the colours it makes.
JESUS: The sea let with her fullness roar
CHORUS: They that go down to the sea in ships
JESUS: The world, and there who dwell.
CHORUS: Their business there to do
JESUS: Oh let the floods clap hands; let hills
CHORUS: In waters great, the Lord’s work see
JESUS: Rejoice together well.
CHORUS: In the deep his wonders too.
FARMER: Because that He the stormy wind commandeth to arise
Which lifteth up the waves thereof, they mount up to the skies
Down go they to the depths again!
K,L,P.: Our souls with ill doth quail!
W-W.: They reel and stagger, drunkard-like, and all their wit doth fail.
K,L,P.: Now do we to Jehovah cry, when we are in distress!
W-W.: And thereupon he bringeth them out of their anguishes!
CHORUS: He makes the storm a calm, so that
FARMER: The waves thereof are still.
BODHI.: Their rest then glads them; He them brings
W-W.: To the haven which they did will.
JESUS: I make the storm a calm, so that
The waves thereof are still.
Their rest then glad them: I them bring
To the haven which they did will.
CHORUS: He makes the storm a calm, so that
The waves thereof are still!
Their rest then glads them; He them brings
To the haven which they did will!
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