A Psalm & A Poem

Psalm 19
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

2 Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night showeth knowledge.

3 There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.

4 Their line is gone out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

5 which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.


David Middleton
“Things”
After Psalm 19:3-4

We live among them here and partly are
What they have always been and still will be
When soul from flesh is sheared along the scar
That marks the stitching-place as soul breaks free.

Yet if we hold them wholly in the mind
To take apart and savor, then let go,
The essence of our senses but the rind
Of some rich fruit we taste but hardly know—

The bare pecan whose trunk is simply there,
Its winter limbs against a winter sky,
The squirrel that brings the nut through dusk’s dim air,
Just doing what it must to live and die—

Such things in turn may be more than they seem
In matter’s shadow-land of squirrel and tree:
Creatures who’d wake with us in that first dream,
Time’s common tongues in timeless colloquy.

(From Measure 3.1)


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