I'm working on a short book on Isaiah. I'm at the very beginning of my work, and am reading a couple of translations of the book straight through, including Robert Alter's. The opening lines ring in my head, but the 5th through 7th verses could have been pulled from my heart.
“Every head is sick
and every heart in pain.
From footsole to head
no place in him intact,
wound, bruise,
and open sore —
not drained, not bandaged,
not soothed with oil.
Your land is desolate,
your towns are burned in fire.
Your soil, before your eyes
strangers devour it,
and desolation like an upheaval by strangers.”
For I am desolate, aching with the pain of the revelations that continue to ooze forth. Wounds that go to the bone, that are undrained and unsoothed. West Virginia, Baltimore, Memphis...what were these men thinking? doing?
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