{"id":2385,"date":"2011-01-27T15:08:32","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T23:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/blog\/?p=2385"},"modified":"2011-01-27T15:09:28","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T23:09:28","slug":"what-if-a-poem-by-malcolm-guite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/blog\/what-if-a-poem-by-malcolm-guite\/","title":{"rendered":"“What If” – A poem by Malcolm Guite"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A Poem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Any of you who are veterans of our events know Malcolm Guite.\u00a0 For those who don’t, he has long been a friend of the Foundation and has participated in many of our events and conferences.\u00a0 He is also a wonderful poet.\u00a0 We are including here, with his permission, a recent poem he posted on his facebook page.\u00a0 (For those of you who prefer the spoken word, you can listen to him reading the poem here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It reads as follows…<\/p>\n


\n“But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” – Mathew 12:36-27<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What if every word we say
\nNever ends or fades away,
\nGathers volume gathers weigh,
\nDrums and dins us with dismay
\nSurges on some dreadful day
\nWhen we cannot get away
\nWhelms us till we drown?<\/p>\n

What if not a word is lost,
\nWhat if every word we cast
\nCruel, cunning, cold, accurst,
\nEvery word we cut and paste
\nEchoes to us from the past
\nFares and finds us first and last
\nHaunts and hunts us down?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What if every murmuration,
\nEvery otiose oration
\nEvery oath and imprecation,
\nInsidious insinuation,
\nEvery blogger\u2019s aberration,
\nEvery facebook fabrication
\nEvery twittered titivation,
\nUnexamined asservation
\nIdiotic iteration,
\nEvery facile explanation,
\nDrags us to the ground?<\/p>\n

What if each polite evasion
\nEvery word of defamation,
\nInsults made by implication,
\nQuerulous prevarication,
\nCompromise in convocation,
\nPropaganda for the nation
\nFalse or flattering peruasion,
\nBlackmail and manipulation
\nSimulated desparation
\nGrows to such reverberation
\nThat it shakes our own foundation,
\nShakes and brings us down?<\/p>\n

Better that some words be lost,
\nBetter that they should not last,
\nTongues of fire and violence.
\nO Word through whom the world is blessed,
\nWord in whom all words are graced,
\nDo not bring us to the test,
\nGive our clamant voices rest,
\nAnd the rest is silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any of you who are veterans of our events know Malcolm Guite.\u00a0 For those who don’t, he has long been a friend of the Foundation and has participated in many of our events and conferences.\u00a0 He is also a wonderful poet.\u00a0 We are including here, with his permission, a recent poem he posted on his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,84],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-2385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general","category-poetry-arts-and-culture","tag-malcolm-guite"],"yoast_head":"\n"What If" - A poem by Malcolm Guite - Living the Legacy of C.S. 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