Читать книгу Psalms for Skeptics - Kent Gramm - Страница 15

The desire of the wicked shall perish.

The wicked’s brains will go right down the drains

much like everyone else’s, I bet.

They’ll all be on fire but their hottest desire

is just what the wicked won’t get.

Lust strong and mighty will put on her nightie

and disappear into the night;

the Lord of the hood will commend the dead good

before He puts out the last light.

Is this what our Jesus was for?—to save

a concordance of ghosts? The rain falls the same

on the just and unjust, washing their laundry away.

The heavenly host will give up the most

forgetting, forgetting, forgetting all day

desires that were us, desires that are lost.

Desire’s the cycle of death and rebirth.

By the grace of God, the wicked will lose

their desire. The good are on their own. Suppose

that heaven is full of the wicked, pure

because purged, clean of the dreams of Earth,

innocent of memories, gold to the soul.

On Earth, they would be a parade of ghouls,

but in heaven they are feathered; they are birds.

The good must stay and suffer all things here—

herds of birth, skirts in every satan’s snare,

earning the first curse by their lust to live;

having given all, scalded, fallen, scarred,

cheated by the power of the sweet hour of prayer;

these shall be with Jesus and remember who they are.

trusting in the Lord

Let those who trust in God trust if they must—

but as for me and mine, we’ll look out sharp.

Whatever can’t be held by vigilance

is worthless. Take this matter of my heart

attack: should I eat pork and trust in God?

Or should I clot myself with globs of cheese

served over eggs. The best I ever had—

good Southern cooking, was tender beef bleeding

sour cream fried in bacon grease, white cheddar

grits cooked in whole milk—soft custard and fudge—

oh man. That roast couldn’t have been redder

if it was roses. I just love that stuff.

And this is what I got for trusting God:

clogged arteries. You can’t do what you want.

The counter-argument is obvious:

What the hell? What are you talking about?

What does what you want have to do with trust?

What does cheddar cheese have to do with doubt?

For surely doubt is trust. If vigilance

is doubt, then let us man the battlements,

because there is no God to fall back on—

only the unknown lover in the chance.

If you can trust the Lord enough to doubt,

unafraid of a God of certainty,

unafraid of all but living without

the intimate within, then—but we’ll see.

The angels give up faith for certainty—

or do they wonder, where we only see?

The Lord can take away this suffering—

or so the Bible says. The praying pagans

of all ages have stayed awake for pay,

afraid to not pray, waiting for something:

and many are answered; there is no question.

This should not be. The Lord’s Prayer said simply

for the Lord—a voice crying out dimly

articulate in a nightmare, the best

one can do in sleep—that should be just right.

Or why not pray for fun, just the sheer fun,

of careful, spider-like composition?

What can you get from listening at night

but the terror of horses on the road,

slowly walking, clop-clopping: growing old.

To wait and listen while you die is prayer,

“trusting in the Lord.” There are other prayers;

the others work sometimes and this one doesn’t.

(Resigned indifference and tired despair

work. Demons work.) This one’s the most unpleasant

until you die beforehand, before death:

until you trust like a stone. That should be

the best: God praying, the Holy Ghost’s breath

breathing through me, me exactly nowhere

but here, attentive as a cup of tea.

The breath assumes a focus of the air—

each awake in the other, I and she—

awakening forever in the prayer,

the birth and circle of unending prayer.