Bloom

Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion,
they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings:
The grain, the wine, and the oil,
flocks of sheep and cattle;
They themselves shall be like watered gardens,
never again neglected.
—Jeremiah 31:12

We have had the nights of weeping
and the prophecies of doom,
had the days of wide-eyed sleeping,
walking through a drifting gloom.
Yet the endless springs are seeping
into furrows, into tombs:
We shall blossom in his keeping
like a garden in full bloom.

Some have plowed and others planted—
he has worked our waiting earth;
sunk his hands into the land here,
seed, himself, in death and birth;
and the mercy he has granted 
feeds us like a secret source.
He has tilled and we shall answer
with abundance springing forth.

Oh, but now the fields are barren,
bleaching gray beneath the sun,
as we dread to hear the sirens—
waiting ended, war begun.
Still the gardener is preparing
for the harvest yet to come:
Even now the seeds are stirring;
even now his mercies run.

A la Nasir al-Mulk Mosque o Mesquita Rosa, By Joan Simon from Barcelona, España – A la Nasir al-Mulk Mosque o Mesquita Rosa, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48223889

When Mercy Reached From Heav’n to Earth

When mercy reached from heav'n to earth,
forgiveness stretched out east to west,
the grass that springs up from the dirt
grew to a garden of the blest.

The barren ground of Calvary
now bears an ever-blooming rose.
The gates of Eden swinging free
encompass every flow'r that grows.

And we who sprang up with the dawn
to wither in the gath'ring dusk
find that we blossom on and on,
bear fruit that overflows the husk.

How can it be that we should bear
the grain of heav'n from earthly roots
unless the vine, with tender care,
entwines itself about our shoots?

O mercy, come to soak the ground
and drench the furrows where we sleep.
The heav'nly love that you pour down
will wash and wake the fallen seeds.

O Christ the blossom, Christ the vine,
transform the grasses into trees
where all the birds their shelter find
within the living shade of peace.

Holy church Maria of the Castle, Olivenza (Spain) By José Luis Filpo Cabana – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44932624

The Garden

The garden where you bid us first
to multiply, our acts have cursed.
It now is lost to all our charts.
Will you replant it in our hearts?

The man and woman made of clay,
before your bidding could obey
broke faith, O Lord, broke right and good
and went to till a barren world.

No garden grows but by your might,
but by your gifts of rain and light;
relentless, though, we plow and sow
and bid the seed by our work grow.

By sweat of brow and stoop of back
we seek to burgeon where we lack,
but not a seed we plant bears fruit
excepting Christ himself is root.

The harvest gifts of fruit and grain
come after storm and after pain
or don't, and we are barren left,
lamenting all that we're bereft.

'Twas in a garden, sweating blood,
that Christ accepted for our good
the bitter passion of his end,
and planted something new to tend.

Naught but his touch could break the soil—
not all our groaning, all our toil—
none but his pow'r could plant the seed
where all the birds now rest and feed.

O, gard'ner of that Easter morn,
let what you plant in us be born,
a gift as pure as rain-washed earth:
your life, your will, and our rebirth.