Poetry

UNDRESSED

by Walter Boswell
02/13/19
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Undressed

Hearing thusly, asking always.

What opinion, in the vanity, shall ever be worth

                                                a dressier vision seen?

When every clothing I have packed away for centuries

                                still virgin lies on me.

                                “Speak only the truth,”

                                                dare you say;

                whereas in truth, Truth speaks for itself.

Speak less, then, and hide more these bounded covers

                until God’s naked Word is attired.

Amen

                So be it.

Justice only …

                when it involves punishment;

Truth only …

                when it carries conviction;

Consolation only …

                when it disparages effort.

I have wearied myself with my simple understanding

                                to ever know a good thing,

                                an honest physician,

                                a medicine working.

                Very well.

Salvation only …

                if it comes by eternal madness.

Summation

Betrayed from my adolescence

                the charms of conscious conciliation;

withered in my adulthood,

                the best fans of my talent heart;

yielding only at this time and traffic crossing

                the mixed signals of

                                a broken right-of-way.

God owes, and never the less

                in measures more than space and finance.

Consider me at end

like the poor and the handicapped,

lost in their disposition of self-sorrows

                the capacity or sound 

to find compassionate relief in others:

the last of id reserves having been summoned

                to serve the most vain of

                heaven’s instinctual longings.

Dr. Walter Boswell

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