March 28, 2007

"Distance" a poem

Fire in the Sky Sunset near Caldwell AR

"Distance"

At a certain distance
I follow You
Ashamed to come closer.
Though You have chosen
me as a worker
In Your vineyard
and I pressed the grapes
of your wrath

To everyone according to his nature:
What is crippled
should not always be healed
I do not know
weither one can be free
for I have toiled against my will...
Taken by the neck
like a boy, who kicks and bites
Till they sit him at a desk
and order him to make letters

I wanted to be
like the others but was given
the bitterness of separation,
Believed I would be
an equal among equals
but woke up a stranger
Looking at manners as if I arrived
from a different time

Guilty of apostasy
from the communal rite
There are so many
that are good and just
those were rightly chosen
And wherever You walk the earth
they accompany You
Perhaps it is true
that I loved You secretly
But without strong hope
to be close to You
as they are...

Czeslaw Milasz
Nobel Luareate 1980
Chair of Salvic Languages
University of Southern California

Labels: Faith, Poem, Scenic Arkansas