To Zion

How can I ever return to Zion?
Even while these Babylonian waters run so deep,
Even taste so sweet I dare say.
I weep for Zion,
but only for the lost children,
but only for the never lasting peace,
not for the Psalms to the Lord,
that I sang day and night,
In her chapels and her streets.

How can I then return to Zion,
When I remember not,
the paths, I walked as a child.
When I was a boy,
How I loved thee!
But now I am a man,
Worshipping at the altar
Of Apsu and Anu and Ea after him,
And I don’t see Hand which writes on the wall,
The wall of this stone cold heart,
as clear as in Nebuchadnezzar’s temple,
I don’t even understand the text,
For I am blinded by these Babylonian lusts.
But now Deep calls from Deep,
And asks that I return to you;
Oh Zion, to you who I have betrayed?
Oh Zion, you who I have betrayed?
With tongue, wickeder than many,
With eyes that have beheld the un beholdable,
With body, engaged in all forms of ungodliness?
How can I now re-sing the Lord’s song?

Deep still calls from Deep,
And asks that I return to you;
And to the Great Forgiver,
He, the Saviour of his people,
How shall I come back I ask,
When my left leg wants to stay,
And my right leg to return,
but only a short while?

Now a third time,
Deep calls from Deep,
And asks that I return to Zion,
And so now for Zion,
Together with uncountable host; heavenly and earthly we sing;
“The builder of Jerusalem is God,
the outcast of Israel he will gather in,
Praise God O Jerusalem,
laud your God O Zion.”

D E Wasake
18 January 2009

Poem Adopted in part from Psalm 137 and 142