Canter Bridge

Poetry often speaks as clearly by its form as by the words it employs. In such cases, structure trumps sound. This is particularly the case when self-selected rigidities of form limit the poet’s options. In such moments, he can do and must do only what he he has chosen to do.

Take the ‘acrostic psalms’. These unnatural compositions shackle themselves to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, imposing upon the poetic spirit the requirement that it begin the next eight lines of verse with the equivalent of say, ‘c’ or ‘d’ or ‘e’. Like an athlete training with repeated forty-yard sprints even though he knows he’ll never perform exactly that movement after the whistle blows and the frenzy begins, the poet hones his muscles with an acrostic psalm. He finds out what he can do and, in the meantime, discovers facets of reality that the normal, more liquid course of life simply does not throw up.

One ought not too quickly grow bored of the acrostic palms. There’s gold—though perhaps not as often as we could wish—in them thar hills.

To find it, one must turn over the shovel for an unprofitable while:

Those who persecute me with evil purpose draw near;
they are far from your law.
Yet you are near, O LORD,
and all your commandments are true. (Psalm 119.150-151)

The poet of Psalm 119 is vulnerable to charges of banality, even if seldom convicted. His fascination with YHWH’s law, statues, and ordinances—it is easy to wonder whether it is better called obsession—is both intense and prolonged. Frankly, it reads better in the Hebrew.

His verses 150 and 151 (yes, the psalm is that long, and more) are an emerging into a sunlit clearing. There is light and a bit of life here, let’s rest for a moment.

The geography of the pursued has seldom been mapped out with greater clarity. Moral cartography may not compile top twenty lists, but if the field should ever choose to do so one hopes the judges will spend a minute in this clearing.

Those who pursue me with evil cause are near …
Yet they are so very far from YHWH’s law …
What is more, YHWH has drawn near to me …
And his commandments are real ….

The self-deluded hubris of the psalmist’s persecutors stands out for the toxic fantasy that it is. The psalmist finds, meanwhile, protection and light in YHWH’s proximity. YHWH’s truth is solid. Their schemes will crumble.

One can almost hear some trash talk echoing out of antiquity, one strains to catch it clearly, it sounds almost as though it’s asking, ‘Who’s your daddy now?’