649 and 650

For one year I have been bound by these laws—

within the claws of these ten syllables.

Pentameter has got me in her jaws—

within her fell iambic mandibles.

And I’ve allowed me to be meal for her,

willingly given all my words, that she

might chew them into sonnetry, and stir

me into floury flow’ring poetry.

Perhaps, so iambized, I am the more

than when I was a gross prose-based life form.

As atoms are more malleable and pure

than carbon—though carbon is living’s norm.

But have I risen over compound prose?

Carbon makes char and, just as well, the rose.

~~~

None ever told me how little God cared

about the sins that have nothing to do

with him. How silly to be so, so scared

of one whose worries are bigger than you.

I don’t mean, God forbid, he loves us less

for cosmic grandeur or celestial fare.

The opposite I must—I must—now stress:

you are his grandeur, and his every care.

And how, I say, in what a frightful way

do you love those for whom your love can’t part?

Had they the fear with which, to God, you pray,

you’d find not joy, but heaviness of heart.

God can’t despise what does not challenge him:

your foibles are as null as dark is dim.