Pain and Poetry
Lament isn’t an animal wail, an inarticulate howl. Lament notices and attends, savors and delights—details, images, relationships. Pain entered into, accepted, and owned can become poetry. It’s no less pain, but it’s no longer ugly. Poetry is our most personal use of words; it’s our way of entering experience, not just watching it happen to us, and inhabiting it as our home.
Eugene Peterson, Leap over a Wall, re: David’s lament over Jonathan & Saul, p. 119
We hear a lot of wailing now, much of it wrung from a genuine place of pain. I can’t address national causes, but all of us are individuals and experience individual pain, going back to when our first parents were kicked out of the garden. Pain was a natural consequence of breaking fellowship with God; pain even in the wellsprings of our deepest joy, like vocation and parenthood.
One technique counselors offer as a means of handling pain is to write about it. Language, especially well-thought-out-and-written-down language, gives us a means of taking ownership of our experience. Rather than merely suffering, we can shape our suffering into an object that’s part of us, yet separate. We can invest it with meaning and give it a name. We’ve transformed an “inarticulate howl” into something that speaks to us, and for us, and of us.
Easier said than done, of course. Pain, whether emotional, physical, or spiritual, is easier done than said, notoriously. In moments of physical pain, I have felt myself dropped into a pit with darkness below, solid walls all around and—maybe—just a sliver of light above. The walls are slick and featureless and offer no foothold for climbing out. Until time, like a slow-working anti-venom, begins to draw out the intensity.
How do you even begin?
You may have to let a little time go by before you can even frame a coherent thought.
Then, try to find a word—just one word.
My God!
Repeat it, for emphasis.
My God!
Complete this question: Why–?
Why have you forsaken me?
Complete this statement: I feel like—
I feel like a worm, not even human.
Describe the circumstances
Mocking and scorn surround me;
instead of sympathy, insults.
My enemies roar like lions, gore like bulls
Describe your condition
I am helpless, poured out like water, loose-jointed, heart-melted, dry as dust.
Say what you need right now.
My God, don’t stay away—
Let me see you! Let me hear you!
Restore me to your precious fellowship.
-Adapted from Psalm 22
When pain is personal, it can’t really be shared. That’s one of the most painful things about it. But by putting it into words, you can share it with yourself. (And Christ, who already knows)
When pain is corporate, there’s a chance someone will relate to what you’re feeling. In that spirit, I offer a lament for our current trauma, based on the above model:
Oh, my country!
Why are you tearing yourself apart?
I feel helpless in the face of such rage.
From a single, terrible spark, justifiable anger
has morphed into madness.
Heartfelt mourning
burns through to chaos.
Locked into our rival camps, we can’t hear each other
What can I say? What can I bring to healing?
Lord, have mercy on us.
NOTE: In a much lighter tone, Wordsmith Apprentice offers several poetry models for imitation. Writing poetry to to a set of rules is easier for a beginner than writing from scratch, because the mind actually feels “freer” within parameters.
