Psalm in Exile
by Tom Baker

What is this "I",
this strutting cipher,
shape of cyclone and cyclone's desire,
quick water whorled
and signed in lightning,
sputtering fire?

Whose doing is this chattering
funeral of a world?
Whose violence flung
decay into a startled garden
and wound all new born things
in the stinking swaddling sheet of death?

O Lord I seek you
at the boundary of my breath,
in birth and death;
but you have bound me
with your grief
and left me as lonely
as a widow in her bed.

© Copyright Tom Baker 2019- 2008