Five Psalms

1. Let us think of God as a lover Who never calls, Whose pleasure in us is aroused In unrepeatable ways, God as a body we cannot Separate from desire, Saying to us, “Your love Is only physical.” Let us think of God as a bronze With green skin Or a plane that draws the eye close To the texture of paint. Let us think of God as life, A bacillus or virus, As death, an igneous rock In a quartz garden. Then, let us think of kissing God with the kisses Of our mouths, of lying with God, As sea worms lie, Snugly petrifying In their coral shirts. Let us think of ourselves As part of God, Neither alive nor dead, But like Alpha, Omega, Glyphs and hieroglyphs, Numbers, data. 2. First forgive the silence That answers prayer, Then forgive the prayer That stains the silence. Excuse the absence That feels like presence, Then excuse the feeling That insists on presence. Pardon the delay Of revelation, Then ask pardon for revealing Your impatience. Forgive God For being only a word, Then ask God to forgive The betrayal of language. 3. God of the Syllable God of the Word God Who Speaks to Us God Who Is Dumb The One God  The Many God the Unnameable God of the Human Face God of the Mask God of the Gene Pool Microbe  Mineral God of the Sparrow’s Fall God of the Spark God of the Act of God Blameless  Jealous God of Surprises And Startling Joy God Who Is Absent God Who Is Present God Who Finds Us In Our Hiding Places God Whom We Thank Whom We Forget to Thank Father God   Mother Inhuman Infant Cosmic Chthonic God of the Nucleus Dead God   Living God Alpha God    Zed God Whom We Name God Whom We Cannot Name When We Open Our Mouths With the Name God   Word God 4. The new day cancels dread And dawn forgives all sins, All the judgments of insomnia, As if they were only dreams. The ugly confrontation After midnight, with the mirror, Turns white around the edges And burns away like frost. Daylight undoes gravity And lightness responds to the light. The new day lifts all weight, Like stepping off into space. Where is that room you woke to, By clock-light, at 3 a.m.? Nightmare’s many mansions, Falling, have taken it with them. The new day, the day’s newness, And the wretchedness that, you thought, Would never, never depart, Meet—and there is goodbye. A bad night lies ahead And a new day beyond that— A simple sequence, but hard To remember in the right order. 5. Lord of dimensions and the dimensionless, Wave and particle, all and none, Who lets us measure the wounded atom, Who lets us doubt all measurement, When in this world we betray you Let us be faithful in another.