What About You Boy?

What About You Boy?
by Frederick Manfred

"What about you, boy?
Is your work going along?
Are you still making candles
Against darkness and wrong?
The whole thing is to blast.
Blast and blast again. To fill the
Black
With songs, poems, temples,
paintings,
Anything at all. Attack. Attack.
Open and let go.
Even if it's only blowing. But blast.
And I say this loving my God.
Because we are all he has at last.
So what about it, boy?
Is your work going well?
Are you still lighting lamps
Against darkness and hell?"

1965, Thorp Springs Press, Berkeley, CA