Sunday/The Watchman

 

                                                Sunday/The Watchman

Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord,

Continually by day,

And at my post I am stationed whole nights.

And, behold, here come riders, horsemen in pairs!

Isaiah 21:8-9

Watchman, what of the night?

Watchman, what of the night?

Isaiah 21:11

Today's gospel is the watchman's, waiting for the return of the lord of the manor. It has become a jumping-off point for many writers, Dylan's "Watchtower" a famous one.

Merton opens  “Fire Watch,” with the first line, “Watchman, what of the night?” 

Isaiah is writing about the fall of Babylon, Dylan about threats and collapse. Merton's is strangely benign about the world, the promise of some gigantic unifying reckoning:

The world of this night resounds from heaven to hell with animal eloquence, with the savage innocence of a million unknown creatures.  While the earth eases and cools off like a huge wet living thing, the enormous vitality of their music pounds and rings and throbs and echoes until it gets into everything, and swamps the whole world in its neutral madness which never becomes an orgy because all things are innocent, all things are pure….  The heat is holy and the animals are the children of God and the night was never made to hide sin, but only to open infinite distances to charity and send our souls to play beyond the stars.

“Fire Watch, July 4, 1952”

Thomas Merton