A Stream Still Flows
by Edward Clarke, author of A Book of Psalms
My poem burns with what it’s not:
The Psalm that’s placed upon its tongue,
As if it had a tongue to cry out at
The nothingness it feels between its sound
And what is being sung:
The theme it has found.
I am like a branded animal
Chosen for its sacrifice
And do not understand the hands that fall
Upon me by the table, their higher reason,
Which feels as sharp as ice
Inside its season.
‘My cup runneth over’ because
My lines contain, like no cup or cupboard,
That which contains. I follow them across
The line, a crooked route, and pant, or chant,
‘The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want’.