Bang Head Here

It’s official: This week, I beat my personal record for rewrites. I’ve been working on poems based on the Psalms, and got a nice draft of Psalm 137 going. Twenty versions of the poem later, I’m almost done. Most of those 20 versions were spent trying to get the first stanza to my liking. I still feel like maybe, just maybe, it could be better but it’s time to fall on my sword and move on 😆

I’ve posted about my process before, and how much re-writing it involves. If nothing else, I hope talking about re-writing normalizes it for others.

Since Psalm 137 features a lot of suffering and weeping, and since writing a poem based on it has caused a fair amount of suffering and weeping for me, I thought I’d share it 😆😬🥺😭

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There we hung up our lyres
on the poplar trees,
for our captors there asked us for songs,
and our tormentors, for rejoicing:
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

How can we sing the Lord’s song
on foreign soil?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy!

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites said
that day at Jerusalem:
“Destroy it! Destroy it
down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who pays you back
what you have done to us.
Happy is he who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rocks.