12/29/2008
Poem For The Time Being
NUMBER 195
A POEM FOR THE TIME BEING
In the gap between Christmas and New Years, a line from "For The Time Being," W.H. Auden’s Christmas Oratorio, comes to mind:
“The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.”
To end this year and begin the next I give you this poem, begun in August at Mount Hermon and finished over the last few months.
+++++++++++++++++
Three-personed God,
You Have Surrounded Me
Behind--
Your track is straight and true
The whole way to
Those mountain pines
Dark against the glorious blue—
And seems to prove the Portugee
Who said, “God writes straight
On crooked lines.”
Ahead—
You fling the daily sun
Into gentle morning haze
And say again, “I fill the void
With Light and Life:
A joy for you in all your days.”
Beside—
Arrayed in serried ranks
Vast Angel choirs
Pour forth their thanks,
Sing “Glory to the Lamb,
The Shepherd Great, the Great I Am.”
Above—
Your always sheltering wings.
Beneath—
Your everlasting arms.
Within—
The Trinity of Love and Power,
Utter Fullness, King of Kings,
Silent Thunder, Lord of Hosts,
Maker and Sustainer of
The world of things.
Three-personed God,
Bless’d Trinity,
How can it be
That You have moved
Right in with me?
It’s quite a shock
To find me host
To Father, Son and Holy Ghost…
Don’t take me wrong,
I think it fine,
I’ll just send out
For bread and wine.
Jerry Sweers
Mount Hermon
August 2008
035-2
