Carrion Comfort

Carrion Comfort


by Gerard Manley Hopkins


Not, I'll not, carrion comfort,
Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--
these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more.
I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come,
not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible,
why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock?
lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones?
and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there;
me frantic to avoid thee
and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly;
my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil,
since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength,
stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though?
The hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him?
O which one? is it each one? That night,
that year
Of now done darkness
I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.


Posted over on Poets.Org