Tuesday, February 19, 2013

If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it. (poem)


A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches.


                                  --Anne Porter

12 comments:

Lorrie said...

Ah. Yes.

Pom Pom said...

Lovely poem. Thank you!

Brenda Leyland @ Its A Beautiful Life said...

Oh thank you for this heart cry in your poem! I say yes and amen.

Brenda

Jeannette said...

Perhaps I should wait until the tears pass to post a comment...

M.K. said...

Very lovely, GJ.

Susan Moorhead said...

Wonderful poem.

BrightSoul said...

OH, this sooo speaks to my late contemplations for Lent! This is wonderful...thank you sooo much for sharing!

Angela said...

This resonates with me. Thank you.

Thistle Cove Farm said...

I told the preacher a couple of Sunday's ago..."you're a good preacher, you tread on the tops and I walk on the bottoms." That's how I feel about this poem.

Gumbo Lily said...

Oh, it causes a little dart to shoot into my heart.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for introducing me to Anne Porter. She must have been an amazing person.
Jules

MKM said...

I like this so very much. Thank you.