Bonhoeffer at the Abyssinian Baptist Church

If all that rises praises you, my Lord,
then bodies sprung from pews can picture forth
saints springing up in bloom from stony earth.
The hands that higher rise and halo toward
the pendant lights catch a gleam and clap
as if a choir of holy beings praises,
descending but to bring us up, and raises
us all until the binding cords go snap.
But you, that love me, tell me to go back?
To grasp the cord and haul myself toward ground,
down, to the home that everywhere I lack.
So, tell me now, how can a way be found
to sing your praises in my fatherland,
that foreign land?