In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, <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 bronze, <br />Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws, <br />And he would weigh the heavier on those after. <br /> <br />Who rests in God's mean flattery now? Your 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 /> <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 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 /> <br />Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!<br /><br />Isaac Rosenberg<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/god-3/
