The New Songs
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs that will make people well, not just well enough,
not just lame and limping, scoured and rough.
The song to sweep through a hospital ward and cast zimmer frames aside,
crutches fall, frail bodies rise, exultant now and glorified.
The songs of light.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs that will make people whole and healed and good,
no pinched and narrow survival but a strengthening passion in the blood.
The song to make the children’s faces shine
in joyous recognition: yes, this world is fine.
The songs of sky and heaven.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs that will surge through every home and make it smile,
bitter words and wounds softened as kindness comes to reconcile.
The song to set the table racing, rafters high with feasting, facing
one another with a truth that broadens, breaks, embracing.
Vast songs of earth and ocean, growing trees.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs to unlock the grim prisons’ doors,
call out the startled inmates, finding all our flaws
now eased, harsh tongues stilled, eyes new-rinsed to behold
a laughing land no longer grey, enclosed and dim, but gold.
The songs celestial.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs that cross the bleak borders’ razor fence,
the guards awe-struck by something more immense,
they unbar the gates and beckon invitation
as pilgrim masses ebb and flow: at last, a liberation.
The songs of wing and waves.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs rejoicing in a rich abundance, partaking
of a sustaining wealth where all is shared, gregarious, unmaking
all that’s crooked, mean: a torrent of tender jubilee
brim-full of glad justice and tenacious solidarity.
The songs of all things living.
I want to sing the new songs.
Don’t tell me of the stern and petty ways
of a weary world. Let me take the gun, let’s walk amazed
and reforge all our weapons into better tools of peace.
To all the hated knots within, without, cry sweet release.
The songs of rest.
I want to sing the new songs.
The songs that mark our long labour to the light,
the songs to bring fresh beauty into sight,
the songs to make your life, and mine, a bright delight.
The songs that source and end in silence, satisfied.
Oh, I want to sing the new songs.
Together, will we sing?
Go out in a gorgeous new creation, adventuring?
It’s not too late.
Come now, rise and sing: new words await.
© Michael Manning
