America’s “eternal death”

On this Father’s Day of the year 2020, as we all experience so much pain caused by police killings of black people, we should reflect on the “eternal death” felt by the father of a black child wretched from him to be sold into a life of slavery.

“Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward.”

Jeremiah 7:24

Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/Jeremiah/7/24

In America, a Prophecy 1793, William Blake describes Orc’s encouragement of the rebellion in the Americas. The work begins with the King of England trembling as he sees Orc provoke the people to rise up, and he witnesses an apocalyptic revelation of a new world. Blake writes;

“‘I know thee, I have found thee, and I will not let thee go…

On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions

Endur’d by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep.

I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love,

In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;

I see a Whale in the south-sea, drinking my soul away.

O what limb-rending pains I feel! thy fire and my frost