becoming powerful

If he were God, he would keep reversing the victories -- which, moreover, is what God does!

-- Roland Barthes*

What will you do

If you find yourself in Egypt

Where your labor is stolen

And fed as the greatest of delicacies

To those who beat you for sport

While maligning your character

If you cry out to the Lord

(or whatever there is to be cried to)

And the Lord hears your suffering

And raises a Moses among you

To take you away from all this

What will you do when the tables are turned

And believe me the tables will turn

Before you are ready

In some corner of the parade

Some eddy in the stream of power

Some place where no one can see you

No news cameras roll

And no anchormen wait to report your iniquity

What will you do when (surprise)

You are head of the committee

Or maybe just the subcommittee

Or chief of police

Or the bursar

As soon as you can get away with it

What will you do

For God has chosen sides

And you are on God's side

Congratulations to the poor but damn you rich

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low

So now you're exalted

And what will you do

For God loves you

What will you do when the Promised Land calls

And you cross the great river to take the possession

Of what you were told you deserve

Will you tumble those Jericho walls

On people whose crimes are

first to live there before you were chosen

(chose) to live there yourselves and

second to name their God by a different name

Will you charge on a horse and with sabre

Tepees of women and children

To music of fife and drum

Singing your victory for history

Awarding medals in memory

Will you build a new temple

Of stolen labor

Is your freedom just a crank

Of the vengeance wheel

Up and then down

Going and coming round

And smacking from behind

This is the trap on the Wilderness Highway

This is the IED on the road to freedom

This is the sin in liberation's heart

Ready to break and to clot the body

All tyrants think themselves aggrieved

They say they just want Lebensraum

And not to be fenced in

They say this is their due

For what they (and you) have suffered

Read back a chapter or two

Our sufferings are notes of history's song

We all have cause for vengeance

If you read back a chapter or two

But the Kingdom is not a schedule for taking turns

And the Promise is not a balance sheet

Comfort the afflicted afflict the comfortable

Saith the Lord

But the tables can turn at a moment's notice

And we are quickly afflicted or comfy

We might already

Have received our reward

If God has taken sides

Then God can change sides

At a moment's notice

The up and the down is not justice

The turning must stop

And the Wheel must come to rest

And we must lay it on its side

There are no special cases

That's what the Creator says

Paupers and princes

Werden Brüder

All created equal

No special rights

Not my freedom right or wrong

But freedom under God

*Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), pp. 46-7