Lines Written in the Dominican College Library
A POEM
However pure this love, however holy,
I want to hold your poor flesh in my arms.
Why do ten-thousand volumes ranked here, cruelly
Whisper rasping death to bodies charms?
And now I read some lines you wrote in youth,
For this is how I fancy shadows kiss;
And then distracted roam the floors of truth,
Where every work bears on sweet Jesus pierced
Since every page treats of His fatal love,
My groan for you of tenderness just seems
Trivial and false beside the blood He gave —
Lacks chastity, the incense He esteems.
But, Love, with no ember burning in the soul,
Cold chastity won’t rise to heaven at all.
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Poetry was once understood to be an anthropological episteme, a way of knowing, if only through a glass darkly.