Belief (4)

On September 30, 2017 By dorahakIn Poems2 Comments

To ask Him if He sees, when He made the eyes
that angrily accuse;
To ask Him if He hears, when He made the ears
that ring with raging accusation;
To ask Him if He is mute, when He made the mouth
that spits hurt challenge;
To ask Him if He knows, cares, desires to stem
the flood of misery
When He knew, cared, desired enough to bear
the Cross;
To ask and then grieve to ask
And in my grief to fall abashed into waiting arms
again, and yet once again,
To ask, “O God, how great is Your lovingkindness!”

Unforsaken

On April 26, 2017 By dorahakIn PoemsLeave a comment

On a sunny day to feel so cold
or to be joyless in the moonlight
alone with demons that circulate in the air
like dust motes no one else can see
but the prisoner engulfed by placid Hades—”of suffering
the Old Masters were never wrong”—
agape in excess, empty of hope.

I cannot feel the sunlight’s burst or the moon’s
pale rays but this I know in my darkness:
enthroned on high in the heavens
my King reigns in whose power lie the visible
and invisible, Who holds sway over all,
yet undertakes to dwell with me
to deliver me from hell.

¹line from W. H. Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts (poem)

John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The Heat of the Summer

On July 14, 2015August 4, 2015 By dorahakIn PoemsLeave a comment

Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me! (Job 19:21)

In the heat of the summer, don’t shame me:
whether I sit scratching my skin-sores with a potsherd,
or whether I groan at the grievous wound of my soul’s sin,
both are despair-breeding calamities worth your pity,
my brothers and my sisters, listen to me:

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