Possessed
A POEM
My God, I’m grieved to say it is not true:
Not true I desire naught else but you.
I’d gladly own the world, so great’s my greed;
And this despite your flesh on which I feed.
Yet I’ll possess no treasure, great or small,
Till you, and you alone, become my all
In all. Meanwhile I’ll bow to all I crave
At its behest. Accordingly, enslaved,
The more I have, the more I’ll be possessed.
You are my only hope. I have confessed
That hundredth part of sin I know in me.
Lord, for these and all my sins, have mercy.
Oh, grant that I may worldly things eschew;
Not wanting them, I’ll have them all in you.
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Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.