Babel Revisited

(observations while flying on a dark night)

On a dark night
the Spirit of the Lord
moves over the face of the earth.
And while He moves, He observes.
He sees that man has created stars of his own.

Like hand-flung glitter lie
specks of silver and gold,
copper and bronze.
Lights that glow...
a frozen flow over black velvet mountains of earth;
lights tossed,
even as God's own hand
throws much the same essence into the sky.

For in this day--
and almost everywhere--
on that foundational field of black,
civilization encrusts the soft earth with the crystal light,
and like variegated fronds of precious metal
splays over the hills:
intricate, delicate,
rich, hard.

And so...

God looks up.
God looks down.
God sees the beautiful and the terrible,
observing what we've done,
His image the clay
in our hands.

God looks up.
God looks down.
And He wonders if we have found
yet another way
to be Babel.

But then--
--if the dark night is a clear one--
when the Spirit of the Lord
moves over the face of the earth,
He sees one more thing--
a thing that matters much:

For hidden in that black velvet
are rivers of life.
Dark as the rest of creation are they
in the night season, still
that invisible issue comes visible
when the water is kissed by the moon.

Elusive, but real--
as here for a moment,
a slow flash appears
as a silver thread gleams,
and there
a forked stick of light.
Here a luminous cell pulses
along an earth-artery,
spilling...there
into a light-disc:
a lake suddenly awash with opaque brightness.
And where the moon and the water touch largely
shadowy ripples glide like wraiths.

For the light must move,
being the offspring of it parents:
ever moving, ever reflecting
moon and water.
Too soon the water slips
to black again, lost from sight.
And the moon--without its consummator--
Is alone once more in the darkling sky.


But, on that dark night--
When the Spirit of the Lord
moves over the face of the earth--
He sees more than just this new Babel,
He sees the land still married,
and He honors the covenants He made.


Deu 33:13
¶
And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD [be] his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath,

Deu 33:14
And for the precious fruits [brought forth] by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,

Deu 33:15
And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills,

Deu 33:16
And for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof, and [for] the good will of him that dwelt in the bush: let [the blessing] come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him [that was] separated from his brethren.