Our Lenten Poem for the Week

By expenditure of hope,

Intelligence, and work,

You think you have it fixed.

It is unfixed by rule.

Within the darkness, all

Is being changed, and you

Also will be changed

Now I recall to mind

A costly year; Jane Kenyon,

Bill Lippert, Phillip Sherrard,

All in the same spring dead,

So much compansionship

Gone as the river goes.

 But won’t you be ashamed

To count the passing year

At it’s mere cost, your debt

Inevitably paid?

For every year is costly,

As you know well.  Nothing

Is given that is not

Taken, and nothing taken

That was not first a gift.

The gift is balanced by

Its total loss, and yet

And yet the light breaks in,

Heaven seizing it’s moments

That are at once its own

And yours.

By Wendall Barry