Self

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Title:     Self
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [More Titles by Cawein]

A Sufi debauchee of dreams
Spake this:--From Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us; we live and are
Man's own long commentary.

Is one begat in Bassora,
One lies in Damietta dying--
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o'erlying.

But burns the lust within the flesh?--
Hell's but a homily to Heaven,--
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.

Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it;
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.

Be that it is and thou art all;
And what thou art so thou hast written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.

[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Self

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