“Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland
You who are both Beginning and Ending
Though You have neither;
Maker both of light and darkness, blending
Judgment and mercy, infinite Father;
By your inexorable power ever sending
Tranquil clouds and frightening fire:
Pity us, your depraved people, impaired
By evil envy of your consummate power. Spare
Us from blindness as your potent sun is ascending
To where the slashing slant of its demanding glare
Pierces: a solar arrow, dividing
The dry bones of night’s petrifying
Skeleton from the multiplying
Marrow of morning.
At the narrow line between
Midnight’s black and morning’s first lighting—
Dawn and its vast, veiled, unbearable meaning—
You, forever everywhere,
In, with, over your severe sun’s burning, sever,
Discerning unseen
Thoughts and intents of hearts in hiding.
And when twilight’s ember is ending,
When Your sternly merciful earthly sun is sending
The day’s last ray’s flash—then,
Invisible, all-seeing Sun,
From this, your reverse dawn,
Remember your verdict of mercy again.
Fall on our infernal groaning world grown dire
With the villainous mark of man whose flaming desire
Is to be as God.
Then You, Relentless Love, Consuming Fire,
Have your dark descending
And be most merciful then.
—Cynthia Erlandson
Photo by Avi.zoetic via Creative Commons. Image cropped
