Black the cloud and bleak the feeling
Black the cloud and bleak the feeling;
nothing, no-one lifts the pain.
Each new day repeats the cycle:
hope awakes, then dies again.
Bright God's world and bold the colours,
sweet the loves that stir the heart.
But these joys disperse, distorted,
mind and body torn apart.
Not the warmth of home or family
nor the firmest faith in God
can outweigh the heavy blackness,
life's intolerable load.
Reason with unreason tangles;
voices rise and fall and plead.
Treatment, tablets, prayer for healing:
will these steps to safety lead?
God, to you we trust a story
we seem powerless to change.
Here we strain to see Love's foothills;
yonder lies the mountain range.
David Mowbray (b.1938)
© David Mowbray, admin. The Jubilate Group
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