Psalms for Skeptics
(101–150)
Kent Gramm
Psalms for Skeptics
(101–150)
Copyright © 2014 Kent Gramm. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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for Ruth
Psalm 101
O when wilt thou come unto me? (Advent)
You come, I go: one sight of the white Light
and this body drops alone, familiar bone
cold forever, an undertaker’s stone
in a lake of my children’s tears. All right.
What’s left to want but a sign, some surprise,
kindness where the waters of memory
part, Jesus? When you do come unto me—
materialize to my lidded eyes—
what will I be? How will I see what I
don’t want to see? What I am afraid of
is what I want: the unsupposed glory
that penetrates light, the postponed beauty,
the starry child of everlasting love,
the face of truth, beneficent and gory.
Psalm 102
My heart is smitten
My heart is smitten. Something happened here,
inside, like a fire blown out with a bang.
Fell, turned green, passed out. It wasn’t a scare:
it was the real thing. The fat lady sang
like a locomotive. Me, on a cart,
an hour from dead. They put me on a table
and Jesus ran a wire into my heart,
opened a tube; stepped back into fable—
but I knew. He was there. He left a sign,
an artifact, a feather: I mean me.
I was immortal once upon a time,
bore frankincense; unique, I used to be.
But now I see I am a different self.
Survived for now, like everybody else.
my days are consumed like smoke
I can’t hear it, but I know it is ticking.
The days go by with nothing done. Like smoke
from a wispy fire—some dust-thin poems
going out before they reach the flickering
burn. Complain, why don’t I?—that would burn
still more of what is left, a paper tear
on a paper face in a paper year
in a paper space. Do they also serve
who only sit and waste? But let Indian
Summer come, the lazy childhood haze,
bracing fragrant taste of leaves in the smoke,
maples grateful to the all-gracious sun,
and remembering youth going where it goes
uncompleted, ripe, and smiling away.
I am in trouble
My heart is stricken: I will lose you all.
“Where I am going, none of you may go.”
What’s worse is where that is, none of us knows;
still worse, we all know. Whatever you call
it, it smells of flowers for awhile, dust
on the face, the mortician’s after shave:
what theological word rhymes with “grave”
that doesn’t tremble on the lip of “lost”?
One night the Lord came to me in my sleep,
looking handsome like David the Great King,
O Israel, whose look, more powerful
than horses, calls the universe like sheep
from particles, Eternity in flower;
and I was saved. And I will be waiting.
But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever.
The only comfort is the only comfort.
For what is hell but life eternal—that’s
it; just life eternal. Live forever,
enemy! Just you and your friends. Quiet.
Except for an exploding star now and
then, cosmos expanding like an apple
a thousand miles per second, the random
black hole gulping like a hollow drain, and
so on and so on. You will get damn sick
of your friends. Go see the fireworks every
night, all night; one long night. You will all wish
you were dead. That this satire of heaven
would have had a Maker. That the humming
in all that dark matter would mean something.
Psalm 103
Bless the Lord, O my soul
O bless the Lord, my soul, whoever you
may be, you keeper of our memories:
you, whom I call mine though I am yours—I,
the day-to-day perception and illusion,
the child of the unconscious mind, body’s
bedfellow, servant, and traducer, dead
in a sweet dream of aphrodesia, dead
in the lost cause of astronomy: me,
loved?—not the clothes horse I know. But someone
I don’t know who knows me is loved: you
the aromatic of the lotus rose,
beloved of the one and only One,
loved, loved—and you know what I only wound
and crucify: bless the Lord, O my soul!
Psalm 104
thou art clothed with honor and majesty