Category: Poems

A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent – a poem after a devastating earthquake.

A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent  - a poem after a devastating earthquake. 

A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent, 
a baby suckled at her mother’s breast, 
feels flesh grow cool as she lies quietly dying, 
no comfort now, no warmth, no earthly rest. 

And where is God amid this dust, these ashes? 
Is this God’s plan, this random, rancid death? 
Where is the blessing in these crumbling buildings 
where silent bodies drew a final breath? 

The dust, a pall, obscures the teasing sunrise. 
See, dawn’s temptation to arise, to wake. 
But this dishonest call is, empty, hollow 
to any who’ve survived this this night, this quake. 

What now? The still, small voice still quietly questions: 
there is no consolation for this pain, 
but mid the dust and rubble of this carnage, 
humanity might rise in hope again.
©Andrew Pratt 7/2/2023

The day after the earthquakes in Turkey, Syria and the surrounding regions. Reposted after earthquake in Taiwan.









Tectonic plates beneath this rock hard surface -the Turkish-Syrian earthquakes 2023

1	Tectonic plates beneath this rock hard surface, 

	uplifted, twisting life and limb and steel. 

	The landscape that was home has lost its features, 

	destruction means that few are left to heal. 

	

2	An empty chair amid such devastation 

	where cars like toys, are lifted, spun about;

	and here we wait and pray in helpless anguish; 

	and 'where is God' we want to cry and shout.

	

3	Incarnate God we need your present spirit 

	to live within your people at this time, 

	to energise our prayerful words and action, 

	to offer grace to life's discordant rhyme.

	

4	God offer hope to those who feel forsaken, 

	to those whose lives have spun and turned around; 

	to those whose grief defies all consolation, 

	bring grace and love and hope and solid ground.



Andrew Pratt (born 1948)

© 2011 Stainer & Bell Ltd. Alt 6/2/2023 by the author.

11 10 11 10

Tunes: INTERCESSOR; LORD OF THE YEARS
On the day of the earthquakes in Turkey, Syria and the surrounding areas.

Earthquake- iPad art (c) Andrew Pratt 2023

The Beatitudes – a hymn – A contradictory blessing

The Beatitudes - A contradictory blessing

The gospel reading appointed for this coming Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12, is known as the Beatitudes. The following hymn was inspired by this passage:

1	A contradictory blessing 
	of those who feel unblessed,
	when life is torn and twisted
	for this to be redressed; 
	a time of reparation 
	and yet a time for grace 
	when those who feel forsaken 
	will meet God face to face.
	
2	And in that time of meeting, 
	the hurt will find new joy, 
	the poor will welcome riches, 
	more than they could deploy; 
	the mourning will find comfort, 
	the lost will see God's light 
	to bring them to the dawning, 
	beyond their darkest night.
	
3	The ones who ache with hunger 
	will share a glorious feast,
	and those reviled and hated 
	will find they are released.
	The gentle will inherit 
	the greatest gift of all,
	while rafters ring with laughter
	where crying filled the hall.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2015 © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 7 6 7 6 D
Tune: THORNBURY

Holocaust Memorial Day – When words are spent – a new hymn

When words are spent and grief destroys compassion, 
or fear of war throws shadows like a cross, 
God melt our hearts and fire imagination, 
that we might sense the pain within each loss.
 
This loss can blind our eyes and freeze our feeling, 
can numb for us the pain of holocaust, 
for memory fades, to leave just words revealing
a horror far beyond all human cost.
 
God open in our present generation, 
a depth of human empathy to feel 
humanity that bridges every nation, 
that only love and hope and grace can seal.

Andrew Pratt 10/1/2023
Words © 2023 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 11.10.11.10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/holocaust-memorial-day-2023/

Auschwitz – Birkenau – the end of the line

In the beginning was the Word – a Hymn

The Gospel according to John says nothing about Jesus’ birth. It talks of ‘The Word’ becoming flesh. We can translate that today as ‘the energy, the source of all creation becoming human’. In shorthand God becoming human. This hymn echoes John Chapter 1.

1	The logic, the life-blood, the source of creation, 
	the word that had spoken when all came to be;
	the ground of existence, of love and emotion, 
	this God is incarnate, the light is set free.
	
2	This light in the darkness could not be extinguished, 
	it shone through the cosmos, was coming to birth;
	the great conflagration of stars in their forming 
	condensed to humanity, born on the earth.
	
3	The person of Jesus who walked in the desert, 
	who argued and struggled, who hungered and wept, 
	was one with that God-head, yet totally human, 
	was growing and learning, could know or forget.
	
4	So here in this person our God is illumined, 
	the word that is spoken, the love that is lived, 
	are clues to the nature, a window beyond us 
	to things we have doubted, to One we believed. 

Andrew Pratt (born 1948) based on John 1 
Words © 2010 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 12 11 12 11
Tunes: ST CATHERINES COURT; STREETS OF LAREDO