Volume > Issue > The Will

The Will

A POEM

By William Dunn | March 1985

I’ve heard of those on milk and honey fed

But when I set about to eat

I found instead

Of heavenly bread

The food of earth surpassing sweet.

My hunger cried for pungent nourishment

Yet ached still more in satiety

For one more bite

Of tart delight

From dainties that beguiled the eye.

I wanted to sing praises to the Lamb

But in my heart the sound I heard

Was not I-Am

But chiseled sham,

A wrought idolatry of word.

Ambition radiated its own light

And pushed the rhymes away from You,

A lust for night

Safe from Your sight

But blazing in the world’s view.

So make my final songs, O, to ring true

That no broken distance lies

Between, Lord, You

And my own view

Until at evening singing dies.

The Chain

The chain that’s fixed to the throne of Jove,

One link dissolved, the whole creation…

Epithalamion

As puny astronauts set out,

Sheathed in their metal skin,

Exploring vastnesses without,

So do…

What Is the Purpose of Poetry?

Poetry was once understood to be an anthropological episteme, a way of knowing, if only through a glass darkly.