On Psalms
113-118
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Meditation on Psalm
113
I feel you in the hollow of my heart,
But
when I enter, you are not within.
I know you in the shadow of not
knowing,
A dream I can no longer quite remember,
Your arms around
me, my need against your chest,
But nothing more awaits me than the
wind.
I wish that I could love you as of
old:
The Lord our God, of whom I sing in praise,
Who sits upon the
throne of my observance
And judges of my righteousness with
mercy;
Who answers prayers, and raises up the lowly,
And quickens
with delight the mother's womb.
I know you as a question with no answer,
A
metaphor for being, or a curtain
Hung between the supplicant and
death.
But truly I have turned away from you
As from a childhood
home, my heritage
Fading like a star that greets the
dawn.
Meditation on Psalm
114
When Yisrael came reeling from the
ashes
To settle in this foreign promised land,
Return to Babel,
squeezed among the voices
That blundered into English by and by,
The
rivers of Manhattan, being tidal,
Reversed, and then reversed, as is
their way.
For here there is no joy but in the
heart,
No answering reflection of our passion.
The lilt of grass in
spring is our own song;
The majesty of mountains, our own poem;
The
promise to our ancestors, a myth;
The land of our redemption, the whole
earth.
O love, that mingles all in one
profusion,
Free at last to rendezvous at will!
As dogs of different
breeds become the Ur-dog
That silent slipped into the caveman's
camp,
So will we in America return
To those lost tribes who left our
ancient home.
Meditation on Psalm
115
To whom do I give thanks, if not to you?
I
wish to find the fountain of these waters,
The breath that gives its
fragrance to this earth.
It cannot be that being is but being,
For
deep within it we can glimpse the void;
Yet something moves like love
across the heart.
I bless the bread, but bread has no
volition;
I bless the wine, but wine cannot rejoice.
I bless my
family, both before and after,
But they, like me, are fruit and not the
vine.
Who, then, is there to receive my blessing?
For blessing being
is like blessing sand.
To live without you is to live alone.
Even
walking by the way, we speak
To someone walking silent by our
side,
There or not. And so I speak to you,
My one-who-is-not-there,
and seek your blessing,
And thank you for my love, if not my
faith.
Meditation on Psalm
116
I would not beg for light except in
darkness,
Or plead for pity but in piercing pain.
Happy, well-fed,
housed, with ample savings,
And death a still far-distant
destination,
I put my faith in medicine and music,
Quite capable of
standing on my own.
I look at those of faith as grownup
children
Clinging to their parent in the sky,
Believing fairy tales
so fantastic
I cannot quite believe in their belief.
Nor can I see
myself ever believing
That at the core of being there is
you.
Truth, like beauty, must be free of
interest,
Purely for its own sake, uncorrupted
By need, desire, even
desperation.
Yet were I broken on the rack of life,
And in such pain
I longed alone for death,
I know well where in torment I would
turn.
Meditation on Psalms 117 &
118
Some say you may be wired in, a
trait
Evolved to help the human race survive;
In which case even
atheists must pray
Unconsciously, as sheep dogs might herd
children;
In which case even I must find you waiting
Within the
deepest longings of my heart.
Forget the many trappings of your
glory--
The names, the miracles, the revelations,
The stories, signs
and wonders, sacred days:
Within the thing is something more than
thingness--
A father, mother, friend to whom I speak,
That I be not
entombed alive in stone.
O let me move beyond your mere
existence,
The doubt that stands between us like a wall,
And burrow
underneath that fierce objection
To where we can converse, a quiet
chamber
Still as early morning in the desert,
Lucid as a sunrise on
the sea. Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use. |
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