Sparrows on Ash Wednesday
We are the birds
Perched on the pinnacle of greatness
Surveying all below
Declaring
Mine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory
Forever
Amen
Unseeing, ignorant
Of the mountain of stone and sweat and paint and tears
The monstrous beauty
The edifice
That grants to us our perch;
Of this steeple, of this dome
That we shit and walk upon with well-soled feet.
The thunder calls:
Take off thy shoes for thou standest on this Holy Ground
And we scamper, and laugh,
And mock-
Our tiny brains
Incapable of acknowledging the ineffable,
Our trembling and tears
Incomprehensible
Even to ourselves.
And yet the eye
That sees our waste and ear that hears our dissonance
Still looks on us as we fall
From grace
And loves.
C. S. Sperry
3/22
Sparrows on Ash Wednesday
We are the birds
Perched on the pinnacle of greatness
Surveying all below
Declaring
Mine is the kingdom and the power
And the glory
Forever
Amen
Unseeing, ignorant
Of the mountain of stone and sweat and paint and tears
The monstrous beauty
The edifice
That grants to us our perch;
Of this steeple, of this dome
That we shit and walk upon with well-soled feet.
The thunder calls:
Take off thy shoes for thou standest on this Holy Ground
And we scamper, and laugh,
And mock-
Our tiny brains
Incapable of acknowledging the ineffable,
Our trembling and tears
Incomprehensible
Even to ourselves.
And yet the eye
That sees our waste and ear that hears our dissonance
Still looks on us as we fall
From grace
And loves.
