Tamar

 I

We will remember you

In the places in between;

Marshland and shoreline, dusk and early dawning,

The interstitial littoral

Where the lost linger.

Princess and victim, torn and betrayed.

You are all our tears:

The dreams that shatter on the rocks of cold indifference

The silence where our voices should have been:

Dreadful and pathetic,

The spirit’s anorexia,

The body pales away.

Brother and father betrayed you,

For they cannot hear our cry.

Our woman-song is discord

To the rhythm of their march,

And our screaming fades away.

Who will heal the broken?

II

Daughters of Jerusalem, watch from your towers!

No beauty that we should desire him –

Broken, broken ..

Let the stones rise up and cry!

He sheds our tears,

He carries our silence

While the prancing princes wave their tawdry swords ..

There is no health in us.

Pity now, take pity oh my people!

But there is no pity here:

Stone hearts within stone walls

As there always were,

Let the weak go to the wall!

And, outside the wall,

The drumbeats of our hearts are shocked and still.

III

Who will remember?

The laughing girl, the daughter of the king,

Rich to life’s promise,

Her beauty his desire.

And the promises are broken,

The promises unspoken,

And the house becomes unholy,

And the women drink despair.

Howl to the uncaring moon!

The garments of her glory

Torn as her soul was torn:

The gaping wound

In the horror of her body.

And the king did nothing.

IV

Another day, another king

Embraces his scaffold as a bridegroom takes a bride,

Pinned to her by love.

The torn flesh cries out

And the Father is not there:

God walks the desolation.

Only the women watch,

Loving their champion.

 Oh my people, what have I done unto you?

The darkness covers him

The dreadful darkness,

The darkness where the darkest deeds are done,

Where the victims huddle

In their silent pain.

He stands with them on feet too pierced to stand.

V

The broken body testifies

That there are no easy answers.

And the stars swing in their courses,

But darkness still covers the deeps.

And the tears of the forgotten

Are remembered by their God.

He comes as the deer comes, springing on the mountains:

Shall the mountains fall and crush us?

Come out from among the tombs,

From the scarce-lit places,

From the caves of man’s forgetting.

Let him tell your wounds in the light.

Let his knowing balm your shame.

Let him shout aloud his love!

Under blood, and under water

Washed clean from everything.

And the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

And the broken and the torn say, “Come!”

And the very saints cry out:

“How long, Oh Lord?”