Paul Georgiou
So there you are
So there you are, my god, my god,
as clear as day, as day is fair.
You are not hidden as I thought
but evident in everywhere.
Like water knowing how to lie
yet how to drift up to the sky,
there is nowhere you hide your face.
I see you now in every place.
Like blazing, golden mountain clouds
that glorify the setting sun,
it’s very clear to me that you
are not concealed from anyone.
Like gulls that wheel without a care
both slave and master of the air,
they show with secular delight,
your presence in their faultless flight
As trees in serried ranks parade
in perfect order as I pass,
I see you clear in all there is,
no longer darkly through a glass.
Before, dear reader, you conclude
that I’m with godly grace imbued
I think it best I should define
the nature of this god of mine.
I need to make it very clear
this god I see is mine not yours;
he does not ask me to believe
- no sea of faith laps on my shores.
There is no need at all to please
this god with prayer on bended knees.
He does not ask I spend my days
in endless, sycophantic praise.
“I am the fire that warms and burns,
and water that slakes thirst or drowns
I am the breath of life, when roused,
lays waste whole villages and towns.”
Since he accounts for all that is,
the bad as well as good is his;
he occupies no moral state –
his raison d’être to create.
“I am the rain that quickens seed
but, when in flood, leaves land defiled;
I am the sun that fathers life
but in the end consumes its child.
“I am the god of birth and youth,
of beauty, clarity and truth
I am the author of dismay,
despondency, despair, decay.”
There is no way a God of love
would take the trouble to devise
ebola, smallpox, leprosy
and melanoma of the eyes.
No loving God would break earth’s crust
to bury legions in the dust,
nor cast a child with damaged mind
into the world, deaf, dumb and blind.
You make excuses for your God:
“Arcane, mysterious but fair.”
You’re wrong. He’s not inscrutable;
it’s simply that he doesn’t care.
My god at least to me makes sense.
He is a god without pretence;
he is not cruel, is not kind,
- at heart a pure, creative mind.
My god exists in everything,
in every place is always near;
This is the dreadful truth: your God
is hope triumphant over fear.
So if we need a loving God,
we must, and this is surely odd,
create this God as best we can
out of the very best of man.
And if you feel a need to praise
a being resident above,
give thanks this God gave you and me,
despite His faults, the chance to be
a creature capable of love.