Volume > Issue > Possessed

Possessed

A POEM

By Charles R. Fink | September 1984

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.

Pain of Late Conversion

Have mercy, Lord, and by your blood

wash from my brain

the sly recurring pain

…

Sonnet

“Walk circumspectly, and redeem the time

Because the days are evil,” said Saint Paul.

And…

To Phoebe*

Phoebe,

Gentle handmaid

Of us all,

Who assisted Paul

And others

Of the early church,

…