Lockdown Psalm
The Arts & Faith discussion on 19th November considered Martin Wroe’s Lockdown poem I Lift Up My Eyes, and its continuing relevance, now we’re into our second lockdown. The poem particularly resonated with me as Psalm 121 has been my favourite psalm since childhood.
This re-visiting of it was written on April 24th, a month into our first lockdown, with the strains on the NHS very much in mind, especially because a hospital chaplain, Rev’d Katie Watson (Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) had asked Martin to write it.
Martin Wroe is assistant vicar at St Luke’s church, West Holloway and an occasional contributor to radio 4’s Thought for the Day. He says he sees religions as poems and tries to write a poem every day.
His lockdown poem is long, with threads of Psalm 121 weaving through different perspectives of where “My help come from,” such as “my help comes hidden inside PPE”; and in the “shy defiance of a yellow daffodil”; or from those who “walk beside us when we die”; plus many more examples, until the affirmation “I lift up my eyes, and find my help comes from knowing Love is present”
Faith is certainly challenged – “I thought plagues were the tantrums of a petulant god we no longer believe in” and the poem confronts God with “I don’t know if I believe in you, You don’t make it easy”
The relentless strain on everyone, but particularly on care workers, is clearly conveyed in many telling phrases, such as “My days slip through these dried out fingers, raw from washing, wet from tears” and the sense of general isolation comes across as lockdown confines us to where walls close in to a caged safety.
A powerful message comes through in so many small details conveying pain, loss, frustration, but ultimately gratitude to those who carry us through such precarious times “against the odds.”
Finally Hope shines through since “Love will keep our lives from this time forth, for evermore”
So let us hope that a successful vaccine and further effective treatment will ‘come forth’ before too many more lives are lost.
The poem can be read here: