2018.08.20.
Song for the Storm
Versions: #2Come, strong storm from the eternal void
and steel my will, release my string!
Lift my spirit upon eagle-wing
and show me the way and the day to come.
Come storm, and all the fragmented flurry!
Come, lethargy-eraser from the east,
in bleak, ravaged, fading spring
and separate all dead from growing life.
Longstrider swift, come back
and blow at wild daybreak
the wanderer-horn under the sky
calling as during the night.
Wake me from slumber nuisance and neediness
with greetings from your oceans.
Shine the longing out, carry the sorrow off
and rouse me with your strong song.
Rouse me to work, rouse me to deed,
fill me with strength and earnest ways!
Be the Lord's besom for a world
which disintegrates without salt and seed.
A year-old straw so thin and bleak
I am, in the unsteady autumn gale, – Sing
of all that was and is no more.
My life is frail, my voice weak.
Come fill me, life, with ecstasy and storm!
Flood, heated liquid of life,
and tend that fire, that hidden force
which shatters the stiff norm of death.
Bend me like a storm-bent birch on the altar,
where each leaf shivers and sings,
and force me, life, with push and gust,
to serve you in joy as in sorrow.
Teach me the great humility – bend
my spirit, like the tree trunk in the storm.
Solar storms stubborn, straight, come,
my yearning which these heights pull upon.
Bend me, but break me not down.
Teach me to stand in life's game
as steady as this stiff oak,
as soft as windswept straws on the knoll.
Teach me to sing, wind upon the heath,
as silently as you do between straws
of all the frail, meagre, gray
who unmentioned lived, unknown struggled.
Like a forest in storm from glacier-fells
sing, soul, and feel dauntless and strong!
A word can do the work of giants,
and lives even though the man falls.