Eugene Gordon, "The God I Know" (1930)
Not the kind and benevolent father
Of a hapless race is the God I know;
Nor yet a calculating Intelligence,
The scheme of a million universes
Mapped and planned in infinity of mind.
He is instead a blind and stupid force,-
Albeit powerful, ruthless as floods
Unharnessed, or windwhipped fires in canebrakes,
Or headlong comets in a boundlessness
Of space. Creating, he knows not his work;
He kills, and is unmoved by compassion.
He is purposeless in all his designs--
If he has designs. To supplications
And hosannas, all, he is deaf and mute.
He is such a force as drives machinery
And suffuses the dark with glow;
As stimulates all life and yet again
Reduces it to dusty nothingness:
He is such force as electricity.
Neither love nor hate is the God I know,
Nor friend to those who suffer bereavement;
He neither knows about human frailty
Nor cares to know; nor yet of virtuous
Self complacency. He is blind and dumb;
He is calloused with indifference.
Only to contemplate the character
Of the true God overwhelms the heart with awe
That so irresponsible a being
Should possess so absolute a power.
Published in Saturday Evening Quill, 1930