Newtown, Ct.

I worry before I post some pieces. Sometimes I worry because what I write might make people judge me. Sometimes I worry about stirring anger without any compensating benefit.

But I hesitate to post this prayer because I am writing about a tragedy as an outsider. I don’t want to add any empty piety to the internet traffic about Newtown, Ct. I don’t want a copy of this to end up in the in-box of a parent of one of the Newtown victims, for them to call me a fool or worse.

I publish this prayer with this disclaimer, and I commit it to the judgment of my friends.

Newtown, Ct.
 
To wake from horror
Would be rebirth
To the parents of the dead,
To the desolate in spirit.

What you think and feel, my God,
I do not grasp, cannot know.
Do you wait in stillness
Until the reckoning?

Your son, who died, died in pain.
But at Golgotha you saw Easter.
What convulsion came from three days
Of a body that knew no rot?

So I weigh Golgotha against Newtown.
Where wounds gape at heaven.
Where earth covers the young.
Where earth crushes the old.

But I have not touched sweat like blood.
I have not died under darkness.
I know no hell nor its hurt.
My hand has not probed your wound.

Heaven is nearer to earth
Than earth is to heaven.
Your thoughts are nearer to ours
Than ours are to yours.

Your angels are quick,
But their light is unseen.
Cosmic wheels turn, eternal winds blow,
But they are unheard, they are unfelt.

A reckoning will come
Between you and us.
Another reckoning will come
Between those who grieve and you.