Notes About The Poem
Book of Psalms, capturing its evolution from an ancient musical artifact into a living, permanent mirror of the vulnerable human soul.
Between the Willows and the Throne
Beside the running waters where the heavy willows weep,
There lies an ancient book of song that never falls asleep.
It is a mirror for the heart, a landscape made of breath,
That walks the valley of the sun and shadows out of death;
The music of a wooden lyre, a king’s imperfect praise,
That echoes down three thousand years of ordinary days.
It opens where the righteous stand, just like a rooted tree,
That grows beside the riverbank in quiet majesty,
Unshaken when the tempests blow, unyielding in the drought,
While all the wicked drift away like chaff upon the flout.
And from that green and quiet edge, the varied music swells,
To fill the crowded temple courts and ring the desert wells.
Sometimes the songs are thunder-cracks, when Yahweh bends the sky,
And rides upon the cherubim while lightning flashes high;
When mountains skip like frightened rams and deep foundations shake,
Because the voice of holiness has caused the earth to wake.
The heavens speak in silent prose, the day pours out its speech,
Of boundaries that a cosmic hand has stretched beyond our reach.
Yet softer notes are woven in beneath the temple dome,
A shepherd leading weary sheep through rocky valleys home.
He spreads a table in the night before the hunter’s eyes,
And pours the oil upon our heads beneath the open skies.
Though shadows deepen in the gorge and terrors grip the breath,
His rod and staff are comfort still against the gates of death.
But do not think this sacred book ignores our human stain,
For more than half its bleeding lines are heavy with our pain.
It is the place where honest dust may look to heaven’s face,
And weep because the wicked thrive and justice loses place.
"How long, O Lord?" the singer cries from out the lonely pit,
"Have you forgotten how I break and wither where I sit?"
The dampness of the dungeon floor, the poison of the tongue,
Are carried in the gritty hymns that ancient Israel sung.
There are the tears of Babylon, where silent harps were hung,
When captors mocked the ruined land and begged them to be sung.
There is the broken, crushed, and raw confession of a king,
Who stripped his royal robes away to mourn a lawless thing,
And begged to have a cleaner heart, a spirit right and true,
To wash away the bloodstained dark and make his nature new.
And yet, the sorrow never stays; the rhythm has to turn,
The weeping only lasts the night until the mornings burn.
The mourning clothes are torn away, the dancing shoes are tied,
And rivers in the southern waste flow back in swelling tide.
For He who numbers every star and heals the broken heart,
Will never let a fragile soul be shattered clean apart.
The volume rises near the close, the sorrow fades from view,
As if the earth can hold no more but making praises new.
It ends in one explosive shout, a grand, symphonic roar,
That bursts across the sanctuary, flooding out the door.
Praise Him with the trumpet blast! Praise Him with the flute!
Let every string and crashing cymbal nevermore be mute!
Let everything that borrows breath, from beggar unto king,
Stand up within the courts of life and let the Psalter sing!
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