As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

~ C S Lewis

dandelion, the above posting by yet another spammer needs your expert editing skills!

quote:

Originally posted by Richard:
dandelion, the above posting by yet another spammer needs your expert editing skills!

I'll have to delete the whole post as the spam link isn't showing up in the editing window.

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser
Published in "Flying at Night"

My attention was caught by this Forum topic a week or so ago. I remembered offering a few selections in the past. Then, by chance just yesterday out of nowhere, I found a small piece of paper in some old notes not seen for quite some time.

In the folded sheet this poem was printed out all by itself with no other comment or reference for it being there!
How appropriate the imagery for a Ray Bradbury site exchange:

"The Eagle"
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.