Psalm Poems (141)

After Psalm 141

What I have –

accept it.

Accept it when I say I need.

I have no incense,

no fragrant offerings.

What burns of me is a heart

close to your face.

And if my hands are empty,

I offer emptiness.

Hear in the sound of my lips

a searching,

a rehearsing of your name.

Ready for the grave that they were made for

my bones already are.

See how my eyes remain:

open, always on you.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (23)

(1) After Psalm 23 [Oegstgeest version]

Who sees, knows me,

feels my failing,

nears in my need.

Through thickets all around me

whispers his peace.

Wherever I walk, the river mirrors him,

clear with his calm.

I see I’m one of his.

Where I walk is all a valley

and it’s deep with death.

But death’s no deeper than you go with me,

know with me.

Whatever is ahead, with you

I’ll know that it is mine.

The heckler that’s with me here

can never turn your face away

from me. And where I go, I’ll go

in light and I’ll be seen.

My going is a dwelling

and I’m in it with Who sees forever.

(2) After Psalm 23 [Neihu version]

Who wants me knows

wherever I am wanting.

I walk beside the water

and it mirrors Whose light.

Wind among the grasses:

Whose whispering.

Who brings me through:

through all the rocks of truth

Who knows my name.

Though the valley all around me here

dies as I pass,

I fear no end:

no end of being known.

Your knowing knows in mine,

goes where I am going.

Wherever I will go

with you it’s home.

The heckler, who is with me too,

can never hinder you:

your hands: they hold my head up

and the cup to my lips.

Surely I will walk in light

and goodness all my days:

for where I live’s the dwelling

of Who wants me and Who knows.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (139)

After Psalm 139

You’ve taken me on.

I wake, and my rising

stands in your knowing.

You follow my going

onto my streets and over,

out into your distances.

Where will my walk,

my circle end

except in your opening eye?

Wide enough’s your Eye

for all my ways.

Be ever so strange

the word that tries my lips:

you’ll be the sayer.

You wait me all around,

ahead, behind –

where do my fingers reach

but into deeper knowing

that is yours of me?

Where could I go

that wouldn’t bring together?

Ever our face is wider, meets

opener. If I could climb your heavens,

so would you.

If I preferred your hell

you’d wait in hell.

If I took the wings of morning,

flew the ocean – when I landed

it would be into your hand.

If I called down all your darkness

all my darkness

would be light to you:

my dark you never feared.

My innards hang within me

and within your knowing;

down in my mother’s belly

you began with me.

Was fear, was wonder yours

before it settled in my soul?

You’re implicated in my very under.

Deep within your earth the faults

become with me.

Gleaming in my bones

they are my lines and characters,

your mind’s to lighten them,

to see how you shall read them.

How can I tell you what they mean

to me – your thoughts by me?

I feel them all around me, more

than sands around the sea.

And when we both awaken

they’ll be there for us.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (97-100)

(1) After Psalm 97

Joy will be the earth’s when,

if you come.

And if you come with clouds about you,

still you come. Beyond our hearing

almost is your name, with all the fire,

all the swords that came before you here.

And yet we’ve heard of you.

A flash has broken through the earth to us:

of you. It had to do with longing:

that you were not contented

with your height: you longed for us:

for even me you longed,

your joy was stronger even than my fear.

A flash, a joy

has been enkindled here:

my little lamp of thankfulness

to light your way through darkness

if you come.

(2) After Psalm 98

What could I say that would be new for you?

if ever I really knew of you, I’d be.

What’s an earth, an ocean?

What are the rivers, serpent-like

arising from their beds and falling back?

What is a mountain rising into snow,

melting again in wind?

Not water, not stone –

I would be the new thing

if I knew of you.

(3) After Psalm 99

Where you rest on high’s

too high for me to see.

It’s here in print I see your name

and read aloud: say he.

Higher than I can read they say

you seemed to your seekers –

your Moseses, your Aarons.

They wrote us,

wrought us what you seemed to say

on high, high on a mountain

in a cloud of do’s and don’ts.

That they said was you.

(4) After Psalm 100

Look for Whose face where joy is:

wherever, whenever you can sing –

there are the eyes

that open as the heart,

as gates,

as portals almost opening

from here.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (119)

After Psalm 119

(1) aleph

Blessed would be the one

whose walk was a way,

treading into light

what the whole heart sought:

who knew the dooms that self has brought

are wrought for you:

a helping you be witnessed

in the need that’s yours and mine.

Am I made to find your track?

Will all my groping come to you?

My praise is honest:

honest as my longing is

to find your truth, and find it in myself.

(2) beth

The search for you is all the heart I have –

and is my heart for nothing?

Your truth hidden in it –

and you think I won’t hear?

I follow what I hope’s your trace,

my heart’s most hidden, rumored

in my lips’ probing.

Your traces are my treasures.

All my thoughts are searchings,

soundings of the need that is

your only way with me.

What’s truth in you be joy in me.

(3) daleth

I seek my soul

and what I see is dung.

Hold me up

as you were said to do.

Feel in my reach for your reasons

your work, your will.

My soul can’t stand alone:

hold me up

as you were said to do.

Between the fragments of my heart

is room enough: my opening

for you.

(3) vau

May what I meet

the wideness be

where all your silence waits:

silence that my answer be

to all the loud and much and here

that tries my trust.

Ask me not too soon:

I still hope for you.

There in your wideness of silence

may my answer be.

All my going wrong is going on:

seeking:

down your track, your time.

Where all the high and wise are loud

your silence is my joy.

All that I throw my hands up in

is nothing but your truth,

nothing but my love:

nothing but of you and me.

(4) zain

You are the one who makes me hope

for you, for the word.

Wherever there’s still word of you

I live.

Whatever the heckler says –

with you I hold

and in that thought am held.

Whatever the blaze I’m lost in

I’ll see it through

and trace you back

and home into your dark.

Yours is the name

that whispers where I breathe.

(5) jod

Are you where my hands started?

Are you where they point?

Let me feel in my fear

your pointing,

your nearing edge of truth.

Let me know that my troubles are truths,

lamps along your ways.

Let me shelter in your wideness;

your silence be my rest.

Let all my path from throe to throe

be pointing: trace to truth.

(6) lamed

Does truth abide

in other than our time?

Will we hear of you

while earth still is?

Your word, your world.

And here I am: bound,

held to both.

If part of your truth weren’t joy

I’d long be gone.

But I remember:

I’m alive.

That also is your truth.

I may not hear your answers

but I need them.

So much is set to wreck me

but I reckon with you.

Though all the earth should tell I’m trapped,

your truth is wider.

(7) pe

Is there a trace of you so small

my soul won’t cling to it?

The strangeness of your traces

is the sense of my soul.

If your word were small

I’d hear it, and sing with you in light.

I open my lips

and my breath catches:

is that your answer?

Am I a sense of what you see?

the sound of my steps your voice?

My face your light,

your truth, your dawn in me?

Your answer is the living water

streaming from my seeking eyes.

(8) koph

My heart is full when I call:

that’s where I hold you.

My calling is my sign of you,

my proof that I was here before the dawn

to seek your word

and in my hope to find.

Longer than the midnight

is the light my eyes are seeking:

seeking with the me I’ll find you in.

Find in your vastness also

my voice: and in your sight my life.

All that surrounds, besets me here

are signs – senses through to you,

true to you.

All that I know will witness you in me.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (17-18)

(1) After Psalm 17

Include my truth. Be wide enough

to hear my cry and know it is

yourself behind that sound.

These lips are not no One’s;

the light in my eyes is yours.

My face begins where yours is not in sight,

same crying for same.

And where you hear me

is where you could be.

Try my night; sound it:

all my dark is nothing but your own.

All that my lips repeat is in your name:

hear in me your eye’s own heart,

hub of your wings,

hollow of what you hold:

what we embrace together.

Wake, and help me hold!

Loose me from the lightlessness

your sword has left around us.

Help me survive the workings of your hand.

And when I wake to find I’m in an image –

I want it to be yours.

(2) After Psalm 18

I shall love you,

shall call you good

even if your net of death

is eyeing on me here.

Even your net of death is strung

on threads of life.

I shall; o let me follow them;

let me follow all your threads

in endlessness of hope.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (130-133)

(1) After Psalm 130

Where I call you, we’re deep.

There you might be,

nearest the voice of my sorrow:

like you she has no end.

Sharing the one silence:

you in your ever,

I in my fear.

Where saying you fails

I wait you. Here your word might be.

I hope you. Make

of my hope your dawn,

of what I most endure your day.

(2) After Psalm 131

The name that was before thoughts were

you are, in me.

Before I had a mouth

I had a mother.

My soul that was to meet you here

will wait. My lips can wait no more

to thank you: that they still can say your name.

(3) After Psalm 132

Any home I’ve lived in

was a tent in the wind.

Any night, my bed has been

a thing to cling and hide against:

a cold mountain.

And if I have to pray my eyes

to shut in darkness for an hour –

it’s all because I never find

your place on this earth.

Not in the tent:

not in the wind.

(4) After Psalm 133

Rarely on the earth

we are together.

Where we are, the balsam is

that once upon us brings the limbs

to give their light forever.

Dew that once upon the morning

brings the mountain glowing through the day.

Once be seen

is always be, together.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (9-11)

(1) After Psalm 9

When I think of you

all other wars,

all other weapons fade.

Was ever fright here deeper

than your face? – that is

but is not seen.

What hands can touch and kill

is easy; harder

is to be the seen alone.

Hardest: to be never seen,

alone.

 

(2) After Psalm 10

Have I confounded you?

thought you out of sight?

Did my thoughts go too far?

Was my heart too warm for you

where it burned, raged,

wanted you only?

Did you think my heart

was glad when I said:

there is no One?

I had plenty thoughts,

time enough to think,

think you this,

deem you that,

damn.

Words like a drool

that lathered my lips.

Were you afraid when I was so afraid?

But all my thoughts were nothing,

are nothing, do

nothing!

Knower of fear am

I, not

you!

I that think you could not be!

Leave my thoughts beside me now

and see. Me. You.

(3) After Psalm 11

When the little bird senses

the dart on its way, he flies –

away! over the hill!

When I hear the snicker

of the heckler, I stay –

sheltered in the thought of you,

dead on the spot in the marksman’s eye,

deep in your eye alive.

--Lloyd Haft

Psalm Poems (1-5)

(1)   After Psalm 1

Would I have come a better way

if I had never thought He ought –

you ought – to be?

if wanting you to be were not

the day and night of me?

Was missing you the sin that made me me?

Better to be a tree,

standing not thinking,

rooted cool in water

not in hope like me?

Who can tell me, who besides

my self came this way?

I was an only hoper, not maker,

not knower of the trees. They answer you

where no one ever heard you ask.

Their whispering, their leaf was here

before me on your way. Which is

a long before. I say it is

your way. It is.

(3) After Psalm 3

Scared of what’s in me:

thoughts of a skull

that sees you never,

says: there is no One.

But if there is no One, who helps?

Who is it here that holds my head,

bears my bones upright?

Over the mountains of your hiddenness

a voice traces: mine.

Wherever among the thousand thoughts

is one of you –

I know I’m one who waits for One.

(4) After Psalm 4

At times I thought

I could be sure of you.

Now once again in need I voice,

I say you be. I am, and so

you must have wanted me.

I say, and in the chambers of my heart

I’m heard. I speak of us

together, call us here together

in this voice of need.

Not that it is the home I would have chosen

but you choose to leave me here,

alone but for your silence.

And silence is enough,

if this be you.

(5) After Psalm 5

I who am supposed to be

your image. I seek.

Do you seek too?

And as you do or don’t I am.

The voice they say you made me with

is here: I say I need,

hear me I say.

Hear me not wait:

the day my bones can still be in

is short.

Many may be louder

but I stand for you.

They rage against;

I say discern me yet.

Like them I am in falling

but I stand for you.

--Lloyd Haft