When I Look Upon A World Poem by Gert Strydom

When I look upon a world
with shattered people,
see small children living in poverty
with heartache written on many faces

in different places
as if the words have left them
in the asking,
as if they have been abandoned

as if all words have been lost
and will never again be heard
in the paying of a terrible cost
and nothing will bring light to the darkness

the thought comes to me
that somehow I can still pray for them,
that past man’s inequity
God is still able to comprehend and see
and his love that shines through
is filled with compassion and mercy.

[Reference: Ash-Wednesday: V. “If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent” by T. S. Eliot.]