Asking For It (2015) by Jonathan Newmark

Setting of poem by Siegfried Sassoon (1934). Performance by Alexander Harper, baritone and Jonathan Newmark, piano, College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2015

Text:

Lord God whose mercy guards the virgin jungle;
Lord God whose fields with dragon's teeth are farmed;
Lord God of blockheads, bombing-planes, and bungle;
Assist us to be adequately armed.

Lord God of cruelties incomprehensible
And randomized damnations indefensible,
Perfect in us thy tyrannous technique
For torturing the innocent and weak.

God of the dear old Mastodon's morasses
Whose love pervaded pre-diluvial mud,
Grant us the power to prove, by poison gases,
The needlessness of shedding human blood.