Heavy Are The Burdens Poem by Pamela Ascroft

HEAVY ARE THE BURDENS

If I told you God was dead, would you shun me?
The universe in silence weighs the scales of belief and experience.

If I told you nothing matters, would I matter?
The hourglass spills away reason with the passing seconds.

If I told you I love you, would you abandon me?
Guilt fills the room with the cloying scent of sweet falsehood.

"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me? "

The cry echoes from Calvary to Rome;
From Constantinople to Avignon…..

From the Bastille to Valley Forge…..
…..and Gettysburg…
…and Ypres and the Somme…
…..and Normandy, Coventry, Dresden….

…to the gas chambers of Dachau and Auschwitz
….to Lenigrad….
…to Saigon….

….to the villages of Rwanda, the streets of Cairo and a small jail cell in South Africa…

…to the woman with the unexplainable bruises and haunted eyes…
…to the child with the unimaginable secret.

And then…..and then……

A delicate, tiny finger unconsciously strokes a lock of silken hair,
As the perfect, dream-flushed face of innocence slumbers by me in blissful ignorance.

How could I tell you God is dead if such beauty lives?
How could there be a reason more precious, more absolute for His existence than this?

What perfect love this is! What pain is not worth this ecstasy?

Take heart, all ye who suffer….
Not even Death, the great equalizer, will level what He has built within those who love.