Turning
A POEM
“Alas, I cannot find my God,” Man said
Blind with seeking, all but garroted
By parching doubt and reason, limp for air.
“Perhaps it is that God is even dead,
It is that God is dead.”
It grew upon him, a nocturnal care
Imprisoning him within a poor despair,
A long, continual and heavy whim
That sought him in himself
and found him there,
That caught and held him there;
Until in one bright morning interim
Beyond his windowsill a pinetree limb
Whose roots drew from the needle-rotted sod
Leaned to his lonely room and beckoned him.
Reached in and beckoned him
Out of his finite pupa period.
It was as if he saw the branches nod
In sympathy as though to one bereaved
Of self-renewing Life itself, of God,
Of Life itself with God.
Deliverance and Light received,
He saw the great pine green and living, leaved
On both a sunny and a shady side.
“Like God!” Now breathing freely he believed.
His Self, not God, had died.
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