Who Will Answer?

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

From the canyons of the mind
We wander on and stumble blindly
Through the often-tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days
While asking for some kind of clue
Or road to lead us to the truth
But who will answer?

Side by side two people stand
Together bowing hand-in-hand
That love’s imbedded in their hearts
But soon an empty feeling starts
To overwhelm their hollow lives
And when they seek the hows and whys
Who will answer?

On a strange and distant hill
A young man’s lying very still
His arms will never hold his child
Because a bullet running wild
Has struck him down, and now we cry
“Dear God, oh why, oh why?”
But who will answer?

High upon a lonely ledge
A figure teeters near the edge
And jeering crowds collect below
To egg him on with, “Go, man, go!”
But who will ask what led him
To his private day of doom
And who will answer?

If the soul is darkened by a fear it cannot name
If the mind is baffled when the rules don’t fit the game
Who will answer?
Who will answer?
Who will answer?
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

In the rooms with darkened shades
The scent of sandalwood pervades
The colored thoughts in muddled heads
Reclining on the rumpled beds
Of unmade dreams that can’t come true
And when we ask what we should do
Who... who will answer?

’Neath the spreading mushroom tree
The world revolves in apathy
As overhead a row of specks
Roars on drowned out by discotheques
And if a secret button’s pressed
Because one man has been outguessed
Who will answer?

Is our hope in walnut shells
Worn ’round the neck with temple bells
Or deep within some cloistered walls
Where hooded figures pray in halls
Or from old books on dusty shelves
Or in our stars, or in ourselves,
Who will answer?

If the soul is darkened by a fear it cannot name
If the mind is baffled when the rules don’t fit the game
Who will answer?
Who will answer?
Who will answer?
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!