Two Poems: Psalm After the Holocaust and Lying Fallow
PSALM AFTER THE HOLOCAUST
(December 2013)
How can anyone make a joyful noise
Praising the mysterious power that
Guides the universe, depth calling unto
Depth, when so much fear pervades our time?
The first word can only be
Silence
Profound and unutterable—
Dark as the unbelievable pain
The second word is resilience
A capacity to slowly unravel
This bundle of deadly violence
Spun tightly from bones and sinews
Of the countless twisted dead—
Bundle spun fiercely by humans
Mouthing shameless lies
Expressing their hatred of God
Let us call it self-hatred
A common task laid by life upon
All people to grow and never stop
Growing in their capacity for self-owning
Self-owning people in pain do not blame the other for their disappointment and the Rage that leads inexorably to war–
Only generosity and empathy can repair
Our broken world and yet save us from the
New holocaust which each side—
Unconsciously, perhaps, expects from the other—
Instead may truth-telling yield its healing trumpet sound
LYING FALLOW
(December 2009)
Sometimes when too many forces collide
Forming the ripples of a whirlpool
Threatening and exhausting
It is best to let the pained earth lie fallow
Not in neglect, but to allow a dive-back
From the surface empty and desolate
To a deeper aliveness where the earth refreshes itself
Through myriad healer-worms continuing to turn the field
Which the farmer had plowed and left it for fallow
Instead this is the most vital and essential
Phase of nature’s care for agrarian rhythms
That draw up depths of damp dark prolific
Soil teeming with life, warping it into a
Torrent of trillions of cells single and in bodies
Filled with a mighty longing
For survival, for meaning, and for joy
Likewise the human world of striving and action
Turns empty and barren when uprooted
From the damp fertile vortex where the Holy Ghost
With heaving artistry forms the tendrils of a new earth
From which freshened visions of work and
Service, among people near and far can spring up