My Hand Shall Pray No More

My hand shall pray no more,

Upon this profane shore.

My stride falters on the path,

My hand has unlearned its beads,

A dry and broken heart now bleeds,

A captive to a heretic’s wrath.

My very feet feel foreign now,

To the human dust to which they bow.

A wretched pilgrim, worn and thin,

At a roadside rest, I gave in—

And feasted on the milk-white dove.

Have I flayed God Himself tonight?

Down the drain He slips from sight;

I have cast off all His love.

If it be not so, then leap! Rise!

Embrace the frost within my soul,

For I trust naught; I seek the whole

Of my own destructive prize.

With my blade, at every hour,

I carve through every spell and ghost

That bound me to the hollow boast

Of Your law’s sinful power.

Stripped of spirit, bared to sight,

I walk naked through the shade;

My sin is the shield I’ve made,

My arrogance, my engine’s might.

In the gloom and in the fray,

I am the tyrant of my own blight.

Ask no obedience of me,

I seek to drown in pleasures deep;

Let my own moans wake from sleep

To burn against Your purity.

An unthinking rite, a hollow shell,

A withered fruit, a barren land.

My hand shall pray no more…

…"

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