Psalm 107—Chrysalis and Crucifixion

"The scripture rattled up from someplace it took the cold to find."

A Note From Andy

Sorry for the delay on getting this one out, but fear not, I haven’t disappeared. I just got a job. This month I started working with the Rabbit Room, a wonderful organization in Nashville that is dedicated to finding, celebrating, and cultivating the work of Christians in the arts.

So this month my Darkling Psalter time has come on weekends when the kids are napping or each morning from 4:00 am when one of the kids wakes up and crawls into bed. My wife, who has a supernatural ability to fall back asleep at the slightest provocation, throws a corner of the blanket over the child and lapses back into unconsciousness. I, however, suck at falling asleep and instead begin a dialogue in my head that goes like this:

Productive self: I should get up and work on Psalm 107. 
Comfortable self: But it is so warm and cozy under these blankets.
Productive self: Come on. People are waiting on this.
Comfortable self: But it is so warm and cozy under these blankets.
(Then the Productive self invites allies to weigh in.)
Pious self: WWJD?
Manipulative self: I’ll give you coffee… You love coffee. It is so yummy.
Comfortable self: Hmm. Let me think about it for 20 minutes.

And on and on it goes. 

This is to say that I’m sorry this one took so long to finish. Partly, that is also due to the fact that I wanted the poem for Psalm 107 to mirror the structure of the psalm itself, which meant writing four smaller poems with similar theme/story arcs, just like the psalm. Which took a while. OK. Enough excuses.

If you are just joining us or someone has shared this piece with you, the Darkling Psalter is a project to translate all 150 Psalms and write a poem and brief commentary for each one.

Here are the links for the psalms that have already been completed: 1, 8, 14, 19, 22, 29, 32, 34, 46, 51, 53, 73, 84, 86, 88, 130 (translation), 130 (poem), 137, 142.

Onward.

Rendition of Psalm 107

Give the Lord all the thanks you have
Because he is good,
Because his favor is unending,
Because when his kindness finds you
It can keep you forever.
He takes his people from the grip of the enemy,
And gathers them from the places they wander,
From the East and West,
From the North and South.

I.

Some became lost in the wild wasteland
And could not find a city to dwell in.
They were hungry and thirsty.
The life in their bodies grew feeble and thin,
Tenuous and close to breaking.
They cried out to the Lord and he saved them.
He led them by the hand along a straight way
To a city of real people, with real trees,
And real laughter where they could be at home,
Where they could gather back
What they lost in the waste.
Let the children of men give thanks to God!
For his wonders satisfy the thirsty soul
And he fills the hungry with what is good. 

II.

Some made their homes in darkness,
Under the shadow of death, prisoners of misery
Bound with chains of more than iron,
For they turned against the word of God
And raised their hands in rebellion
Against the wisdom of the Most High.
So God brought them near to toil and trouble
To humble them. They stumbled
And there was none to help.
They called to God and he saved them.
He brought them out of darkness to light
Beyond the fell shadow of death. 
He broke apart the bonds that held them.
Give him thanks, O creatures he has made!
His wonders walk with you
To shatter the gates of bronze
And rend apart the walls of every prison.

III.

Some were fools and sinners
Who embraced iniquity and found affliction.
They came within arms reach of the gate of death.
They abhorred food and wine and all the things
God made to delight his creatures
Though their days still flew like the weaver’s shuttle.
They cried out to the Lord and he saved them.
He healed them with his words
And they escaped the destruction
To which they had devoted themselves.
Let all his works praise him
For the wonders of his kindness,
Offer sacrifices, and burst into song.

IV.

Others went down to the sea in ships
To ply their work on the great waters.
They saw the works of the Lord,
His marvels in the deep.
He spoke and the waves stood up in a heap
And the wind rose in a tempest.
The ship climbed to the heavens
And plunged down into the abyss.
The sailor’s strength melted as fear took them.
They reeled and staggered like drunken men,
And their knowledge and skill were engulfed
By the raging sea that billowed around them.
They cried to the Lord and he saved them.
He arose and stilled the storm
And said to the waves, “Be quiet.”
Then the sailors rejoiced
And the sea held itself still and silent.
God brought them to their haven and home.
And they gave thanks to God who saved them.

Let all the earth worship the Lord!
For he changes rivers into wilderness,
And springs of water into thirsty ground.
He makes a fruitful land into a salt waste
Because of the evil of those who dwell in it.
But he also makes in the wilderness an oasis,
And causes springs to rise in the desert.
There he gathers the lost and the hungry to dwell.
He builds them a city to live in.
They sow fields and plant vineyards
And gather an abundant harvest.
He blesses them and they multiply
And even their animals flourish.
When they are brought low or bowed down
By oppression, evil, and sorrow,
He pours contempt on their oppressors
And sends them into the wasteland to wander.
But he raises the needy out of their affliction
And makes their families like thriving flocks.
The upright see it and rejoice,
But the wicked can only stare in silence.

Whoever is wise, let him keep these things in his heart
As he considers the unfailing love of the Lord.

Notes on the Poem & Psalm

Though many of the poems in this project have a looser connection to the psalm they are paired with, I wanted the structure, topic, and tone of this poem to be in lock-step with Psalm 107.

Just as the psalm has four sections in which people lose themselves, call out to the Lord, and are saved, the poem also has four sections in which similar micro-narratives play out.

In addition to Psalm 107, each section of the poem is in dialogue with another work that acts as a secondary source for that section. Here they are:

• Section I (the one about the wilderness) has the myth of Narcissus as its secondary source.

• Section II (the one about prison) is paired with Aubade, Phillip Larkin’s masterful poem of fearful unbelief.

• Section III (the one about fools and sinners) is paired with the poem for Psalm 88, Panicseed Sprouted Everywhere.

• Section IV (the one about the sailors) is inspired by South, Ernest Shackleton’s journal of his failed expedition to the South Pole.

Poem for Psalm 107

I. 

Some wandered in a wasteland of their own making,
Where the sand was glass and bones,
And the world around them shone like mirrors.
Everything mimicked their gestures, 
But nothing ever touched.
They fed themselves on limelight.
They consoled themselves with hopes
That came to nothing. They lived
By the promise of moving on. 

One man fell down, spent.
He didn’t know until he fell
That he laid down to die.
He streamed out behind himself,
Hoping to be raveled.
He covered his face with his hands
And finally, the dark came.
He heard a voice behind him, an echo,
Like the old myth, and it told him
About the consolation that dogged his steps,
About what comes after the glamour,
About the benediction at the end.

II.

Some lay in darkness, nearing death,
Sweating in bed as if with fever.
They stared at the black ceiling, seeing 
Those days when they could touch both walls
Of their hope, so small a cell it was.
They thought of all the ways that sorrow 
Never gets stopped. They remembered
How long the way back was once they got lost.
And how hard it is to feel things
When the old long longing
Trembles in their trembling hands.

One man writhed all night and tried 
To shake that special way of being afraid.
He worried at the promises of the Almighty
As a dog worries a bone,
Reciting the reasons to believe and
Setting them against all the interminable hours 
When the help he needed didn’t come;
When the voice that should have been there
To say, “I am here. You are here.”
Was not; when he knew for sure
That he couldn’t save those to whom he belonged,
Whom even now he could only touch
As they fell away. 
He would tell them if he could:
Come back! All is forgiven! 
But he missed his chance.
Somewhere it came in time's unfolding,
And he was elsewhere. And yet
There were those times he was told the truths
For which he was not ready.
They return to him now as a litany of lost years.
He gently spoke the words of a prayer
Into the glimmering darkness
In which he sensed something was 
Invisible and vast and holding itself silent.

III.

Some were only fools and sinners
Who fled their fidelities because
They thought they tired of life,
But it was only the dying they wearied of.
They left behind all the moments 
When they had a chance and went West.
This was only one more 
Of the little disappearances 
They’d built their lives on—
longer than the others, but of a kind. 
A small thing really, the leaving,
But costing everything.

One man, worn thin, trembling, scourged 
With freedom, was troubled by dreams
In which things he loved accused him 
Of things he could not remember doing.
He awoke to a darkness that was quieter 
Than any night he remembered. He walked outside.
He fell down in the sand at the place 
Where, years ago, he’d thrown his ring. 
He fell to his knees again,
Praying, digging, feeling for it.
He scratched at the dirt for hours.
He saw all his past indecisions at once.
He thought that all his life had come to this.
If only he could find it,
He might follow the bent lines of love home.

But he found nothing and returned to bed.
His hands bled as he slept and when he awoke 
His sheets looked as though they had been painted with roses.
He stumbled to the shower and the blood 
Ran off his hands and feet, his side.
His body was a blood canvas. 
Beginnings are marked this way,
As are endings. Chrysalis and crucifixion.

IV.

Some went down to the sea in ships
And found the cold breaking of endless 
Oceans of ice that fell to the sea,
Unwitnessed but for their northern eyes.
When the floe locked about the ship,
They emptied it and walked
Out into a year of night on moving ice.
They slept in sleet under reindeer skins
And took tea in the dark, always at 11:00 and 4:30. 
They huddled around the memory of being English.
They lit lamps and thought of warmth.
They pressed together on piles of penguin shit
Because it was the only place the tide didn’t touch.
At night the whales broke through the ice 
Beneath their beds and the men
Slid sleeping into the black water.

One man found himself outside the tent, alone.
Below him there was only the blue darkness
That floats on the black darkness. 
Above his head, the works of the Lord:
Green ribbons of fire and every star that ever was.
He was shaking, staring upward, praying
Prayers from childhood. Father,
Save us. Forgive us. Remember us.
He was all exposed bone.
He stood at the sea’s throat, the block,
The brink. The scripture rattled up
From some place it took the cold to find.
The ice groaned, the water groaned,
The very air held itself bated. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.
Though my flesh and my heart faileth
Thou art the strength of my heart
And my portion forever.

He heard the soft whistle of a whaler,
Almost a dream itself but there it was again.
The others stood in their blankets like dead men
At the last trump, risen.

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Read more from Andy on Still Point (reflections on deconstruction and why people leave Christianity) and Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God).

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An idea can be a fragile thing and 150 poems and translations is a big idea. I meant this project to be ambitious though and, if it is ever complete, it will be the work of years.

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