Will God keep gumtrees
When he makes the world again,
Count ironbarks and wattles
Worth enough to mend?
And will I feel the wide warm light,
And hear cicadas hum,
As lazy evenings fall upon
The new Jerusalem?
A childhood here has filled my head
With creek beds, paperbarks,
Red space, and milky stars,
their colours in my heart.
So, I dream smooth stones to skip,
Long grass, and cockies’ shrieking,
Will also line the river’s banks,
And be the nations’ healing.
Perhaps it cannot be.
Groans betray the earth’s hard curse:
Dry land turns to dust and night.
Is our hope brand new day,
When we shall wake to our new life,
New trees drunk on new rain,
And all that’s dying, old and parched,
Will come to memory?
Must I learn to bear this loss,
sad cost of our sad pride,
and watch the country drift away
on hope’s transforming tide?
Or may I, greeting that new world
Far past this old one’s end,
Feel a smile of recognition,
At reunion with a long-absent, much-changed friend?
7 comments:
Does this mean no more free posts on my blog? :-)
I love the poem - and was about to refer to Rev 22.2 when I realised you already have it at the bottom of your sidebar.
I would still like to post on your blog, but I didn't want to ask too often. I thought about that. Let me know if you'd like anything etc. If this blog doesn't really get cracking I'll be calling you soon enough.
very cool erro. this is all new to me too. my first comment on a blog! wow, a whole new world! so many opportunities to procrastinate, so little time!
Will all your posts come in stanza form?
It would a novel project betoken,
especially in a blogging world
where prose is all that's spoken.
hey that's awesome, love the imagery through the third stansa... I'm not sure why, but it reading it reminded me a little of the Henry Lawson Poem "Saint Peter" though i tihnk it would not be too much to say that yours has a richer explanation of what the bible says about the new creation! (I might give you this poem next time you come around... we have a copy)
Nice one A. 'Sad cost of our sad pride...' beautiful, sad phrase. Photo... from the hike?
Great to see your new blog -- and thanks for the poem.
For me, the real question is not whether God will keep the Aussie flora and fauna, but whether he'll bother keeping any of the other, lesser varieties....
Post a Comment