Poetry 3: Hear My Song

I have ears
and I can hear;
I have a tongue,
but cannot speak.

I hear your songs
and sing along
inside my mind.
But you do not hear
the songs I sing.

I have eyes,
but cannot see.
I hear you speak
of lives and visions
Strange to me;

But my mind is filled
with visions of song
for I do hear and
my heart sings.

I have hands, but can’t act
I have feet, but can’t walk.
Muscle does not move me,
nor tales of woe,
nor machines that tip me
to and fro
Lest I develop sores
that have no meaning.

I cannot feel them.

But I have ears
and a song in my heart
you can not hear.
You know not of me,
of my joys or despair,

You imagine and hope;
you guess, you ignore.
Mostly you disbelieve
there is aught within me

but perhaps pain.

You are more blind to me
than I am to you.
You see but a shell,
emaciated, still,
and imagine there is

nothing else.

You cannot hear
the song that fills me
or know that I
am not alone.
You do not hear
the angel choirs
that sing within me
the song of my heart!

You know the peace
the world does give:
your bellies are full,
your homes do hide you,
your work gives cash
and sometimes value,
your bodies may satisfy
and senses may please you,
war and pestilence
touch not your door:
all both much
more - much less.

But the peace I know
passes understanding
for you, yes,
and me; but sings
full-throated
within my soul.

For I rest not
on your sterile bed;
I am not covered
by fresh linens;
it is not medicine
that gives me life,
nor tubes, nor machines;
no chemist’s tricks
can heal my true Me,
nor can your errors harm me.

It is not birth
that gives life
Nor death that takes it.

I rest instead
in comforting arms;
I am covered with love
that banishes harm
and knows no end.

My life is all
another’s, yet
eternally mine.

There, I am whole,
both body and soul
and all that has meaning,
that is right, that is love
fills my heart
with what has no end.

O poor, earth-bound people,
who love so hard and so weakly
who strive with such pain and so feebly,
who know not the One Who holds me,
nor hear the song I sing,

I pray for you:

that you may be healed,
that you may be born,
that your eyes and hearts
may open and see,
that you may hear
the song in me
that sings the world
alive!

O beloved,
hear my song!
Shut your ears
to clatter and clang
of world and pain
and live!

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(Following is a reply to a reviewer who sort of missed the point. In this case I thought it was the reviewer's lack of reading rather than the author's writing.)

WHAT 'HEAR MY SONG' IS ABOUT

I think the poem is about understanding God's grace.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

So begins one of William Wordsworth’s most famous sonnets.

We confuse doing things as being central to what is necessary for us. But this woman "does" nothing. She is a pure vessel which receives God's grace, and her heart sings. Humans fuss and bother. They try to earn (even with good deeds) what cannot be earned. Loved is not deserve-able, and grace cannot be earned. God is not a prostitute -- He does not sell Himself even to saints. He GIVES Himself, freely and unconditionally. The comatose singer sings with God and the company of heaven a song she hears, for the true Singer is God Himself.

She calls us to sing the song of joy lying in God's grace, which then will motivate and change the character of everything we do in our lives. It will not only make us change from doing or thinking evil to good; but it will change the character of what we do good from being efforts to make ourselves right, into responses to the gift of God that MAKES us to be righteous before Him. As Paul says God reckoned Abraham's FAITH as righteousness, not his works, and that faith transformed everything Abraham did.