A beautiful, unaccompanied setting of Rabbi Chaim Stern’s thought-provoking poem on man’s inhumanity to man amid God’s constant grace. Ideal for collegiate choirs.
| Voicing: | SAATTB |
| Accompaniment: | Unaccompanied |
| Duration: | 4 minutes |
| Text: | Rabbi Chaim Stern |
| Difficulty: | Medium-Difficult |
Tags: 1-5 minutes, SATB with divisi, Secular: Concert Music, Unaccompanied
Is not a flower a mystery no flower can explain?
Is not God the growing, the pattern which
has no end and is never quite the same?
Is not God in the heart that sees it
and weeps for beauty?
Why, then, God, this mystery:
that the bombs fall
and the sprays kill
and the flames rise
and the children go up in smoke?
Why is there still a flower to remind us of You?
Why does the sun still burn to give us life?
How do we still turn to You?
Why cannot we help but turn to You,
But why, why do we turn to you so late?
—Chaim Stern
©1998 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis
All rights reserved
Used by permission
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