In anguish

 Haiku of an aching heart

He is in anguish

for his people; the prophet,

who feels their distress.

Alienated

from their God and King, who seems

to have departed.

Provoked to anger,

God questions them: Why seek you

after foreign gods?

They cut themselves off

from God, forgetting God's law,

flirting with evil.

The harvest is past,

the summer come to its end,

and we are not saved.

Their hurt is my hurt;

my people, broken and lost.

I mourn with dismay.

They languish, wounded,

unhealed. Will there be no balm

found in Gilead?

My tears have no end.

I am a fountain, weeping

for my lost people.

© Ken Rookes 2022

The fountain

The Fountain

Don't say, don't say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched -- but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don't say, don't say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

Denise Levertov 1923 - 1997 
Poems: 1960-1967