The Weeping Traveler

The pavement was dry for once

But all the way there

God kept weeping over my soul:

His rivers of living waters

Ran down, ran down

My neck to the nape

As, all in all,

On this traveler’s way,

I knew it was deemed

Undeserved, and under-appreciated.

Two thousand years ago,

On a day the Word had prophesied,

His blood spilled down, spilled down,

Dripping off his soiled feet,

Seeking and sanguining a darkened earth:

Until the cursings and the spear

Brought His manhood to end

In a hellish hanging—

They too, in their brotherly madness

And beneath His lamb’s moan,

Still did not know Him for who He was

And wanted Him gone from their sight.

Life walks on, walks on.

I now stand for a new ‘pied beauty’,

Esteeming the weight of His love

As it throbs against the thin pulse

Of my ‘hunger for righteousness;’

My meek trembling threatens to flee,

But His silent ear leans

Toward the breath of my life

And as I bend to bear my bleeding-cross,

He restores my regretment of life,

And covers, once more, my humanity

With His divine, friendly fire—

I kneel down, kneel down.

In a renewed garden of Eden,

As if on new earth,

I weep bliss

As I travel on through changed life,

Wandering debt-free

In His First Estate won for me.

His grace must still

Shed down, shed down;

The Daily, He is, must still leap

To the rejoicing of His joy,

And the shouts of His singing

Over my one ransomed soul—

For even after my earth-time and grievings,

And even after the darkness of Troubled Wrath,

When DayStar finally breaks

On that Second Great Morning,

The torrent from His endless death,

Like a be-stilled river’s rest,

Will forever run down, run down

My repentant neck to my nape,

Undeserved, but humbly appreciated.

                    —Dumas fils

Photo Credit: Jakob Owen - Unsplash