Though in my heart there gapes a hungry hollow,
so also is there rocky, fallow ground,
and though your rains may fall, each seed you sow
is grace stillborn there, grace in saltsoil drowned.
Who can live there? and what structure stand there?
Not you, O Triune God—can you be found
where pride hangs thick like smoke upon the air
and numb indifference chokes the earth like bramble?
My heart’s lousy at loving, though your care
enrapture me and wrap me in your mantle:
then plant a garden in me, Lord, and make
my sorry heart and yours, one, consubstantial.
This is day 14 of LABIA MUNDA, a series of forty poems during the forty days of Lent.
In Your Embrace 