Mercy and truth are met together,
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
– Psalm 85
If I could call you, I’d tell you, how after everything
Mercy won out…
and Beauty leavened every heart… later, I’d report,
Mercy and Truth met at Zelig’s Pub, they’ll spend a century celebrating,
Mercy, telling anyone who’ll listen,
saying, “It’s like the birth of a river
or a diamond cove, or an auburn moon…”
but maybe you’d see through that, maybe you
can see me from where you are,
watering my couch, personifying in the dark,
pretending the morning will bring a revelation.
Of course there’s no Zelig’s Pub in this neighbourhood,
it’s just some crazy vision of heaven
I’m working on
to outlast this limbo.
Some days I ache to call and ask what it’s like there —
is there a “then” or a “now”?
a “shall” or an “ought”?
but no technology yet for that.
Do you remember “here”? can you
see everything? is it all laid out for you on some grid?
Can you look up all the times we were together?
like the time we went fishing?
I wasn’t keen but you said it would give us time —
out there on the plank dock,
our hooks in the water held up by bobbers,
and us on our backs betting on who could see
the farthest into the sky,
who could see the bluest blue,
and no way to measure — no telling who won.
I was just happy to take your word for it.
If we could sit and talk, I’d describe
to you how Righteousness, at last,
has settled a world of arguments, and Peace,
that prodigal, has stopped gaming and come home.
You’d know I was lying, but love would cover that.
You will however be relieved to know
that Righteousness, as we’d mistakenly pictured,
doesn’t look like Principal Hegarty — always pacing
and twisting his brass bracelet around his thick wrist,
but looks just like little Dinah
who spends her days on the swing at the Rotary Park,
like it’s her business,
while her mother looks on, lost and marveling.
Lately they’re saying a new end is coming,
that when Dinah grows up,
she’ll fall head-over-heels for Peace,
and they’ll never again be apart.
But I don’t know. Can you tell from where you are?
Lord knows, Truth is wandering around these days looking lost —
yet never once deviating from her story, I’ll give her that;
telling anyone who’ll listen, “Open your eyes, you’ll find it.”
saying, “It’s like a sunlit spring in the wilderness
watering stony paths and arid plains, softening ruts and ridges,
making green pastures where all kinds of people can picnic…”
…and here we all are,
still fighting over what it is.
