PSALM 6: New translations

PSALM 6
By Sam Bailey

    Into the end.
    Into a lot of songs.
    For the octave.
    A Psalm for David:

Lord, please don’t argue
in Your fury, and don’t, in Your craziness,
light me up. Feel sorry for me, Lord. I am
infirm. Cure me, reset
me, Lord, my bones have all been confused.
And my breath’s been a turbulence.
But you, Lord, how long?
Come back, Lord, come for my breath. Make me
saved according to Your sorriness because the person who remembers you
isn’t in death. In hell,
who will tell You anything?
I’ve labored inside this cloud of my groaning.
I’ll scrub my bed every finger-counted night, I will rigabo
—that means “I will cry”—on my horse
blanket with lacrima, English eyeball water. My pupils get disturbed
by fury. I’ve gotten old among all my enemies.
Scatter from me
everyone of you who labor unfairly because the Lord
has heard, from far away, our hamster noises.
The Lord hears from far away
poems. The Lord takes my prayer.
All my enemies turn back and blush with a red velocity.
They blush and their skulls go bankrupt.

*

PSALM 6
By Emma De Lisle

But don’t strike me, Lord, you don’t really have to.
I hear you.
You’re the one who corrects me.
You’re loud about it, only sometimes.
I feel that, I feel your displeasure like blood in me.
That’s mercy, you say, and I ask you for it, I shake, only sometimes.
If I’m well some of the time would you heal me anyway.
Aren’t my bones shaking, did you see that?
Lord how much longer til you shake me yourself?
You know if I’m dead I can’t ask you that anymore.
I won’t ask, I’ll be in the tomb.
Not the tomb I want I look for, O you are not in it.
Yes, I am sick of how I talk, how I cry, all it does is water the couch,
      this couch like half a couch which is limp, and green.
These limp pillows I throw around here, they wet through quick.
Weeping.
It’s not singing, but here we are.
O grief is that you in mine eye?
I grow old.
So do my enemies.
And they sorrow with me.
Get away from me, I don’t want my sorrow.
I want the Lord, who has heard me.
Now me and my enemies blush, it’s sudden, and we’re nervous about it.
But I tell them he heard when I asked the first time.
I tell you he lets me say it wrong.
But he lets me say it again.

*

PSALM 6
By Talin Tahajian

 At the consecrated boundary, in lines, a psalm of David, for the octave

Lord don’t disagree. Lord don’t encase me in your spherical fever.
Have mercy on me Lord for I am weak. Make me sane Lord my bones are
    rolling in their casings.
And my soul is lost in an eddy of blood. But you God. How long.
Turn God and catch my spiraling soul. Make me sound because you are
    the one who suffers with me.
For it’s not death I’ll remember. This is Hell. Who can confess you.
I will labor ceaseless hollow-sounding. I will weep through the
    irregular night. Every night I will lie down
on my mattress and weep. My tears will soak through my mattress.
A wide-eyed frenzy wracks my eye-strings. I grow old amongst my foes.
Get away from me all you devotees to evil turf. For the Lord concedes
    to my wailing.
From this cave far away I know the Lord hears my begging. Please Lord
    receive my asking.
They blush and are disquieted all my enemies. I say TURN and they turn
    and blush deeply swiftly.

—

Originally published in Issue 004 of Kismet

—

Sam Bailey is from Central Pennsylvania. His poems are out or
forthcoming in The Yale Review, Image, Missouri Review, Best New Poets,
The Boiler, Adroit, Colorado Review, West Branch and elsewhere. He’s a
Ph.D. student in religion at Harvard University and serves as the
Associate Editor of Peripheries and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Mark: A
Journal of Christian Poets.

Emma De Lisle’s most recent work is out or forthcoming in 32 Poems,
The Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, The Missouri Review, West
Branch, and Washington Square Review. She lives in Western Massachusetts
and co-edits Mark.

Talin Tahajian is from Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in The
Kenyon Review, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, The Rumpus, Copper
Nickel, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Magazine, TriQuarterly, Pleiades,
West Branch, The Missouri Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Drift,
Mizna, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She’s a Ph.D.
candidate in English at Yale, an assistant editor of The Yale Review,
and associate editor of Mark: A Journal of Christian Poets.