RHYTHM
A POEM
You are the maker of maps,
Straight edge and compass in hand.
I am horizons unknown:
Lead they to ocean or land?
We meet upon lines of our chart
To puzzle out the sly and subtle art
Of marital intersection: heart to heart.
Quadrant by quadrant we move,
Plotting our course with such care —
Pen and ink symbols for love,
Paper for essence laid bare.
Life’s meaning is created by its frame
(For without rules, one cannot play the game),
And even love grows deeper for the same.
Yet on a night without stars,
Hope bids us break measured pace,
Yield to multiplied love,
Trustingly leap into grace.
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Take for instance Mary; she
shocked by some divine insistence.
Yet the experience of God,
…Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.