Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)
by Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Jonathan Cohen
Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5) by Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Jonathan Cohen Give ear to my words O Lord Hear my groans Listen to my protest For you are not a God who is a friend of dictators nor a supporter of their politics nor are you influenced by their propaganda nor do you associate with any gangster There’s no honesty in their speeches nor in their press releases They talk of peace in their speeches while they increase their war production They talk of peace at Peace Conferences and secretly prepare for war Their lying radios blare all night long Their desks are piled with criminal plans and sinister documents But you will protect me from their plans They speak through the mouth of machine guns Their flashing tongues are bayonets… Punish them O God foil their politics mix up their memos block their programs At the hour of the Alarm Siren you will be with me you will be my refuge on the day of the Bomb You bless the righteous who don’t believe in the lies of their ads nor in their publicity and political campaigns Your love surrounds them like armored tanks From Pádraig Ó Tuama: This poem is modeled after a psalm from the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 5. I love the Psalms. They are so strange and emotional and immediate. It’s absolutely clear when you read a psalm who it is they think their enemies are, and what it is they hope for, and how they feel. And they’re crying here and shouting there, and looking for punishment here. You see the same kind of energy and impulse in this poem of Ernesto Cardenal’s. He’s absolutely straightforward about what he sees as justice and who it is that he sees as being against justice. To hear this poem read and discussed by Pádraig on Poetry Unbound, follow this link: https://onbeing.org/programs/ernesto-cardenal-give-ear-to-my-words-psalm-5/