One who is totally unable to communicate sings a song of life. |
I have ears and I can hear; I have a tongue, but cannot speak. I hear your songs and sing along inside my mind. But you do not hear the songs I sing. I have eyes, but cannot see. I hear you speak of lives and visions Strange to me; But my mind is filled with visions of song for I do hear and my heart sings. I have hands, but can’t act I have feet, but can’t walk. Muscle does not move me, nor tales of woe, nor machines that tip me to and fro Lest I develop sores that have no meaning. I cannot feel them. But I have ears and a song in my heart you can not hear. You know not of me, of my joys or despair, You imagine and hope; you guess, you ignore. Mostly you disbelieve there is aught within me but perhaps pain. You are more blind to me than I am to you. You see but a shell, emaciated, still, and imagine there is nothing else. You cannot hear the song that fills me or know that I am not alone. You do not hear the angel choirs that sing within me the song of my heart! You know the peace the world does give: your bellies are full, your homes do hide you, your work gives cash and sometimes value, your bodies may satisfy and senses may please you, war and pestilence touch not your door: all both much more - much less. But the peace I know passes understanding for you, yes, and me; but sings full-throated within my soul. For I rest not on your sterile bed; I am not covered by fresh linens; it is not medicine that gives me life, nor tubes, nor machines; no chemist’s tricks can heal my true Me, nor can your errors harm me. It is not birth that gives life Nor death that takes it. I rest instead in comforting arms; I am covered with love that banishes harm and knows no end. My life is all another’s, yet eternally mine. There, I am whole, both body and soul and all that has meaning, that is right, that is love fills my heart with what has no end. O poor, earth-bound people, who love so hard and so weakly who strive with such pain and so feebly, who know not the One Who holds me, nor hear the song I sing, I pray for you: that you may be healed, that you may be born, that your eyes and hearts may open and see, that you may hear the song in me that sings the world alive! O beloved, hear my song! Shut your ears to clatter and clang of world and pain and live! -------------------- (Following is a reply to a reviewer who sort of missed the point. In this case I thought it was the reviewer's lack of reading rather than the author's writing.) WHAT 'HEAR MY SONG' IS ABOUT I think the poem is about understanding God's grace. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” So begins one of William Wordsworth’s most famous sonnets. We confuse doing things as being central to what is necessary for us. But this woman "does" nothing. She is a pure vessel which receives God's grace, and her heart sings. Humans fuss and bother. They try to earn (even with good deeds) what cannot be earned. Loved is not deserve-able, and grace cannot be earned. God is not a prostitute -- He does not sell Himself even to saints. He GIVES Himself, freely and unconditionally. The comatose singer sings with God and the company of heaven a song she hears, for the true Singer is God Himself. She calls us to sing the song of joy lying in God's grace, which then will motivate and change the character of everything we do in our lives. It will not only make us change from doing or thinking evil to good; but it will change the character of what we do good from being efforts to make ourselves right, into responses to the gift of God that MAKES us to be righteous before Him. As Paul says God reckoned Abraham's FAITH as righteousness, not his works, and that faith transformed everything Abraham did. |