The Ninth Psalm as Rendered by Laurance Wieder

I stumbled upon this tonight in a book called The Poets' Book of Psalms, and I really liked it, so I thought I'd share it.  That's all :)

The Ninth Psalm



If I could tell it all,
I would say thank you
for the toppled statues,
for the dusk of gods sung
only in dead languages,
for wild grape vines tangled
in the timbers of a century
that frame our little picture
of eternity. And I remember
there was justice, maybe, since
I hope the dead might be
remembered, though their names,
outnumbered by the sontes
once used to mark the exit spot,
are worn down, in an alphabet
that can't be read aloud.


Not always and not ever, maybe
masters will stick in the mud
of what they most admired,
boasting how their acts
engraved in stone erased
accounts of people sacrificed
to feed the maw, the pointless
grim machinery of nations:
If there is something other
than our selves, they will not win
forever, will some time remember
they are human, and may even
know themselves, and feel afraid.