57297: God

<p dir="ltr"> In his malodorous brain what slugs and mirc,<br> Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!<br> His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.<br> The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat<br> To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,<br> On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,<br> He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.<br> But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like<br> bronze,<br> Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,<br> And he would weigh the heavier on those after.<br> Who rests in God's mean flattery now? Your<br> wealth<br> Is but his cunning to make death more hard.<br> Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking.<br> And he has made the market for your beauty<br> Too poor to buy, although you die to sell.<br> Only that he has never heard of sleep;<br> And when the cats come out the rats are sly.<br> Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn.<br> But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots,<br> And in the morning some pale wonder ceases.<br> Things are not strange and strange things are<br> forgetful.<br> Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost<br> Out of us, but it is as hair of us,<br> And only in the hush no wind stirs it.<br> And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes,<br> And restlessness still shadows the lost ways.<br> The fingers shut on voices that pass through,<br> Where blind farewells are taken easily. ...<br> Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!</p>