Primordial chaos coaxed into a pattern as light and dark become the day and night: This world is formed of undivided matter, then separated, spectrumed out of white. The valleys rise; the mountains take their height; and time begins to know before and after. The dry land lifts with ocean as its border— yet mountains rise in deep abyssal shade. The soil original maintains its order except where springs and streams the heights invade or weaken cliffsides ‘til they shrug, unmade, and humankind cries out to God its warder. There is no answer: Word sinks down to silence, and we who long for life are drowned in death. The only certainties are rot and violence, though, diligent, we search the length and breadth of earth and sea for ways to keep our breath— in vain between the flood and desert dryness. And yet the silent Word forever spoken is echoing in every night and day. All times may shattered be, all patterns broken: It lets itself be shaken on the sway of tempests and of earthquakes in their play. Creation groans and something new is woken. Between the cause and the effect is mercy; between the water and the land is mud. Divinity into our death is bursting to share our desert bone and tempest blood, and God himself is lost beneath the flood and knows our fear of it, and yet our thirsting. He swallows death, by death our life increasing; our time he pierces with eternity and takes our shattered fragments, mending, piecing. He gathers us, the dry land, and the sea all in himself, yet each itself shall be, and in his endless day go on unceasing.
It's an attempt (and it may not work) to say that Christ can hold these opposites in himself where we want resolution, one or the other -- and also to echo God's promise after the Flood that day and night, seedtime and harvest, would not cease. It might just need a rewrite, though.
Ok, I see where you're going with it. I understand thematically how it fits in the poem, i just wonder if it isn't misleading about God's character. All that came to my mind was the false yin/yang idea (in all light there is darkness) and the countering words "in him there is no darkness at all" from 1 John 1:5
I was with you until the last line. I'm not sure I understand it. I love the beginning of the last stanza, though!
It's an attempt (and it may not work) to say that Christ can hold these opposites in himself where we want resolution, one or the other -- and also to echo God's promise after the Flood that day and night, seedtime and harvest, would not cease. It might just need a rewrite, though.
Ok, I see where you're going with it. I understand thematically how it fits in the poem, i just wonder if it isn't misleading about God's character. All that came to my mind was the false yin/yang idea (in all light there is darkness) and the countering words "in him there is no darkness at all" from 1 John 1:5
Yeah, I think you're right. I've changed the final line. Thank you for catching that!
I love the way it turned out!
Thank you, and thanks for the assist!