How Is It So To Come To This

How is it so, to come to this,

That through life’s days which end in bliss,

I should have felt such darkened scare

At all that I’d encountered there.

Her rolling hills, her oceans wide,

That ‘gainst the Sun turn side on side,

In Service, Duty, Love they fall

Against the lull of Nature’s call.

‘Tis foolish thought, I know, I know,

To ponder this with so much woe,

But how it seems such waste to me

To harness self and leave God free.

For plainly was just as a child,

That I can say ‘twas undefiled,

My open mind and rounded smile

Now so worn by life’s sun-dial.

For now I gaze a faded stare,

Suckling milk of a previous air,

In kindling up a childhood day

When all was well and life was gay.

But now with old and seasoned mind,

That’s toiled upon our human kind,

I offer up the oldest rhyme

That all’s revealed in its own time.

And from this thought, as old as man,

That’s filled his mind to broadest span,

He’s still to grasp the silent code

That’s written on this endless road.

And yet this code of which I speak,

Has spread itself unto the meek,

For they have lost all sense of self

To find in place, God’s untiring wealth.

Written at 12 Galesbury Road, London SW18 - November 24th, 1986.