Malcolm Guite
Jesus comes near and he beholds the city
And looks on us with tears in his eyes,
And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity
Flow from the fountain whence all things arise.
He loved us into life and longs to gather
And meet with his beloved face to face.
How often has he called, a careful mother,
And wept for our refusals of his grace,
Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping,
Benumbed and stumbling turns the other way;
Fatigued compassion is already sleeping
Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day.
But we might waken yet, and face those fears,
If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.
Malcolm Guite is the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge. He teaches for the Divinity Faculty and the Cambridge Theological Federation, and lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. He is the author of What do Christians Believe?; Faith Hope and Poetry; Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year; The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems; and The Word in the Wilderness. He works as poet and librettist for composer Kevin Flanagan and his Riprap Jazz Quartet, and has also collaborated with American composer J.A.C. Redford. He worked with Canadian singer-songwriter Steve Bell on his 2012 CD Keening For The Dawn and his 2014 Album Pilgrimage.
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© Malcolm Guite, “Jesus weeps,” from Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2012). Reprinted with permission.
This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation: Guite, Malcolm. (2015) “Jesus Weeps,” The Yale ISM Review: Vol. 1: No. 2, Article 7. Available at: https://ismreview.yale.edu
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