Clientology
Come, buy, talk, dine,
demand, agree, use, meddle:
the client is a little god
of trouble—
one that I believe in.
Poems on the topic: god
Poems on the topic “god” on Poets.by.
Scallop
a scallop is absurd for ears
and delicate of heart
it heard an alarm and clapped
only to go
so I bless God but fear
my candle going out
Neuroses
I consider the rosebush cruel
and the rose frightening
as a ship in the Navy.
I am ashamed
of the timber in a book.
I think up a God
and it makes my head
into a well of ice.
White fragility
I ready myself for
a ride in rough conditions
with a chest of glass,
my hand leased
from a pretty lady
and a paper head so full of sin
I begin to see God.
Units: An Introduction
Everything is made
of little units, which
are made of even smaller
units. The smallest units,
undetectable by us, are
reality. All units larger
than these are rearrangement,
illusion, phony structure.
They constitute a kind
of molecular cinema
watched by us and
understood by God,
who is exempt from
the unit-arrangement.
Songs of Faith in the Year After Next XIV
The lapidary care bestowed
By God in fashioning the toad;
The expert craftsmanship which He
Spent on the gnu's topography;
The thought which loosened from that Brow
The crab, the camel and the cow,
With equal lavishness He spent
On many a priest and president.
Davis Matlock
Suppose it is nothing but the hive:
That there are drones and workers
And queens, and nothing but storing honey—
(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)—
For the next generation, this generation never living,
Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth,
Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered,
And tasting, on the way to the hive
From the clover field, the delicate spoil.
Suppose all this, and suppose the truth:
That the nature of man is greater
Than nature’s need in the hive;
And you must bear the burden of life,
As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess—
Well, I say to live it out like a god
Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt,
An Epitaph
He leans across a golden table,
Confronts God with an eye
Still puzzled by the standard label
All flesh bears: Made to die —
And questions Him if He is able
To reassure her why.
Yet Do I Marvel
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Resolution
I WILL not draw only a house or a tree,
I will draw very Me;
Everything I think, everything I see!
I will have no shame,
No hope of praise nor fear of blame!
These things are mean things, and the same.
I am the product of old laws,
Old effect of old cause.
The thing that is, may make the blind gods pause.
Listening
The noise of passing feet
On the prairie —
Is it men or gods
Who come out of the silence?
The Little Black Boy
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
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