Brad Davis

Opening King David


Скачать книгу

God of glory thunders.

      Psalm 29:3

      Neighbor as Theologian

      How can she talk about a “word from God”?

      The weather, yes, or the fate of our hedge.

      A snake or the shrinking odds of her spouse

      beating cancer, sure. But a word from God?

      As though God were an actual person,

      albeit incomprehensibly vast.

      Yet this is how she talks, the way I talk

      about my son from whom I could never

      hear too much or too often, who’s only

      hours away in Brooklyn. Why, unless

      my sin were envy, would I begrudge her

      an assurance of contact? More likely,

      I long for what she has, embarrassed, pained

      by my lack of openness to mystery—

      which, she has told me, is wholly present

      in, with, and under the hedge between us.

      When you hid your face, I was dismayed.

      Psalm 30:7

      As It Is

      The face of God is hidden from me.

      I see only old walls, the clutter

      of familiar rooms, shelves of books, snapshots,

      mix-and-match decor. Awake or asleep

      and dreaming, no divine shook-foil glimmer

      for my inmost eye. Rumors reach me

      of others’ encounters—glimpses of His face—

      but after devouring these, the want

      remains. Is there some special training I need?

      Last week a friend confided that for years

      the Holy Ghost has shimmered inside her,

      every moment beatific. My resolve:

      to pretend my friend is not a liar

      or schizophrenic—and to seek new friends.

      He showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.

      Psalm 31:21

      Putting a Name to the Face

      In Madagascar or Peru, St. Kitts

      or Tasmania, wherever children,

      despite suffering, find games to play

      or halt play to marvel at a column

      of clouds collecting on some horizon;

      wherever anyone takes care to make

      ready a back room for a visitor—

      sweep the floor for the ten-thousandth time,

      place a fresh flower on the pillow—there

      a glimpse, the face you know you know

      in a crowd of strangers who disappears

      before you get a fix on the distance

      between you—

       mercy!—

      and that face.

      Do not be like the horse or the mule which have no understanding.

      Psalm 32:9

      Brother Chronos

      Radio-controlled and programmed to check

      in every four hours with an atomic

      device deep in some bunker in Denver,

      my travel clock is more monk than truant

      on probation, for it desires correction,

      six times a day turns out toward the big

      unseen—receives it—then turns back

      to serving my fascination with time.

      No trumpet sounds to signal the clock’s

      connecting moment—a mute faithfulness

      wholly independent of audience—

      and I would be its disciple, pray the hours,

      live contented, in step with the Spirit,

      but my program is a prison named fear.

      Still, how wonderful to know what time it is,

      precise to within a millionth of a second.

      From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind.

      Psalm 33:13

      Report

      I flavor my food with long suffering.

      The clothes in my closet are unironed.

      I have never spoken in another tongue.

      Given the option, I would work alone

      or in the tested company of friends.

      I find nothing holy in national

      holidays though love getting the hours

      off, time being the skin I look forward

      to shedding once I am done with my life.

      Between Eden and the New Earth, only

      wind, music, and diligence feel at all

      familiar. Here, everywhere is exile.

      I will continue to speak this language.

      Every word, a stand against losing heart.

      No one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

      Psalm 34:22

      God

      Are all theophobic? No one wants to

      be reminded. No thought, sentence, or deed

      can escape the chill of divine review.

      Dread being a dark matter of the soul,

      engines of suppression hum constantly

      flooding the wakeful mind with distractions

      grand as virtue, common as relatives.

      (How else to prevent the unwanted Word’s

      indelicate meaning from causing hurt?)

      Judgment by one’s peers can be useful, but

      keep at bay the cool scrutiny of God

      lest “luv” lose its warm inclusivity,

      “my truth” its fragile singularity.

      No “truth,” though lovely, will be left standing

      on the day Truth absolutely arrives.

      Poor, middle class, rich; straight, gay—no one

      questions the myth: autonomy, each one’s

      rule a law. But those who fear the Lord and

      seek Him lack nothing, their fear a spring-fed

      tributary to perfect freedom where

      unruly wills find rest in serving Him.

      Voice-beyond-language (still, small, holy),

      wickedness reveals itself resisting

      (xenophobically) Thy sovereign wisdom.

      Yesterday, today, tomorrow, folly’s

      zero