'What is the word, he wondered? What is your healing word? Where is the sacred text?' Photo: by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Only say the word and I shall be healed
Poem by Harvey Gillman
And so he frequented the libraries
and consulted the dictionaries,
went online and off, many applications,
hither and thither and back again.
What is the word, he wondered?
What is your healing word?
Where is the sacred text?
Where are the sacred, solemn lips
that shall deliver the healing sound?
How shall I know, he wondered,
lost as he was for so many seasons
among languages, ancient and modern.
I have heard, he thought,
so many words, many compelling reasons.
So many gods have spoken in thunder
from the desert and the mountain top.
A word proclaimed from beyond,
whispered from the most distant of galaxies?
(A sound rises like sap in the tree of the mind,
like lava pouring from the cracks in the heart.)
Utter me again the echoes of your silence.
Hold me close in the arms of your wind.
Let me rest in the awe of your absence.
Shall I then, shall I thus, be healed once more?
