It’s a black and white thing. It’s either an individual reckoning or a deadly default. I made this monotype after reflecting on the thick heaviness over an excavation site we had toured many years earlier. This still haunts as a symbol of destination. The ancient city of Pergamum (and its repeated iterations throughout history) is where cultic practice left an entire proud city ruined. It is a warning for now; for I fear much of the world is heading in the same wrong direction.
Listen instead to the clear solitary cry of the Psalmist.
So, it’s about a choice of focus then, with an upward cry. We still have choice in time: the dark hole looming, or the only way out. It’s a black and white thing.
I will simply offer how a poet I recently heard took that same 5th Psalm and put it into a personal sonnet:
Safe in the love of one who’ll never part,
Of one whose kindness is itself a shield,
Who understands the deep things of my heart
Better than I can ever do, I yield
Myself and my perplexities to him,
And in his house of mercy I am healed;
Healed of this world’s bloodthirstiness, its grim
Deceptions, all its weary wickedness,
The death-speak of its tyrants, as they hymn
The idols of excess, the emptiness
Of endless purchases, all washed away
Until my sight is cleansed. His righteousness
Makes my way plain, and leads me through the play
Of early morning light, to worship him
Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day.
(Malcolm Guite, “Psalm 5: V Verba Mea Auribus”)