The Creation (A Negro Sermon)

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James Weldon Johnson | Jun 1871 – Jun 1938 | American
from God’s Trombones | © 1927; renewed 1955

And G-d stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
"I'm lonely –
I'll make me a world."

And as far as the eye of G-d could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then G-d smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And G-d said, "That's good."

Then G-d reached out and took the light in His hands,
And G-d rolled the light around in His hands
Until he made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
G-d gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.

Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurried the world;
And G-d said, T"hat's good. "

Then G-d himself stepped down –
And the sun was on His right hand
And the moon was on His left:
The stars were clustered about His head,
And the earth was under His feet.
And G-d walked, and where He trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So G-d stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the grass sprouted,
And the little flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And G-d smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared
And curled itself around His shoulder.

Then G-d raised His arm and he waved His hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And He said, "Bring forth! Bring forth!"
And quicker than G-d could drop His hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And G-d said, "That's good!"

Then G-d walked around
And G-d looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And G-d said, "I'm lonely still."

Then G-d sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
G-d thought and thought,
Till He thought, "I'll make me a man!"

Up from the bed of the river
G-d scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great G-d Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corners of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This great G-d,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen, Amen.