"A Voice exclaiming: You Are the Man..."

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 2 Samuel 12 (New International Version) 

2 Samuel 12

Nathan Rebukes David

 ¹ The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, ³ but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.  ⁴ "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
 ⁵ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
 ⁷ Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!



T.S. Eliot said that there is little good religious poetry being written today because the religious poet tends to write what he thinks he ought to feel instead of what he really feels.

To that end I write at times of desolation, even sinking depression, but with a sincere attempt to relate without soliciting favor:; but only the occasional encouragement. Stipulating to the fact that God is gracious and the evidence can be no better exposited
than to give a voice to each literary offering.

Matt Beynon Rees, when speaking of His Old Testament poetry, announced "I write poetry in all forms: mainly free verse, but also formal, metric poems--sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, ballads etc.  Just as a sculptor has to liberate the statue that is hidden in a block of marble, so the poet has to liberate the poem hidden on the empty page and grant it breath. Dees found power in one particular sentence that occurs right after the scene which the prophet Nathan tells King David the parable of the poor man's lamb.  David was incensed and tells Nathan that the man deserved to die.  Nathan exclaimed:  "You are the man". David does not argue but admits he has sinned.  So much of this encounter is, as other failures by King David, dried out in Psalms 51..."Create in me a clean heart...O Lord..."

The poet's duty, Rees shared, is to help each poem find it's own voice.  The reader or listener's opportunity is to reflect and redirect as needed to move further along enjoying a relationship with others founded by Grace through Faith.