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Crying in the Wilderness - A Reblog for the 2nd Sunday of Advent

A poem included in my first published collection of poetry "Doodlings and Doggerel" with the dedication "After Isaiah, John the Baptist and Janet Lees." The first two are obvious. The third is a poet who contributed a similar piece to the Christian Aid Advent and Christmas anthology "Shine On" and which I only unearthed years after writing various versions of what follows, realising how her cire concept and phraseology had worked its way into my thinking. It confirmed for me what I have long believed... that I am a literary magpie... stealing shiny words,  phrases and ideas from others to repurpose them... 
But good art should always influence and inspire others, prompting not just the theft and recycling of words, but a chain reaction of creativity.
So as I reblog/recycle my own words this morning msy they prompt some sort of response in you my reader/s.

There’s still a lot of crying in the wilderness,
In the post-industrial wastelands,
The housing estates once lauded
As places of new hope.
The slums had been levelled
And the high rises raised up.
Peace had come and prosperity
Would follow in its wake.
But the hope has now run out,
The jobs have been exported,
And peace brings little prosperity
To those who always pay
the highest price for conflict.
The streets need straightened up,
The potholes need filled in
and the pavements re-laid.
Who will cry out with comfort for the hurting?
Who will call out the purveyors of pain?
Topple the towering monuments to division
And use the rubble as the foundation
for God’s new motorway
straight into the hurting heart of this city,
into the heart of the problem,
into your heart and mine.
 
Bend and break the proud and the powerful,
Raise up those who are bent and burdened,
Lift up their eyes from all they have known
The painful past and present impotence
So that they can see that God is coming,
Bringing real peace, tangible hope
and justice that cannot be bought.
Cry out...

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