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Turning

A POEM

By Annis Cox | June 1984

“Alas, I cannot find my God,” Man said

Blind with seeking, all but garroted

By parching doubt and reason, limp for air.

“Perhaps it is that God is even dead,

It is that God is dead.”

 

It grew upon him, a nocturnal care

Imprisoning him within a poor despair,

A long, continual and heavy whim

That sought him in himself

     and found him there,

          That caught and held him there;

 

Until in one bright morning interim

Beyond his windowsill a pinetree limb

Whose roots drew from the needle-rotted sod

Leaned to his lonely room and beckoned him.

Reached in and beckoned him

 

Out of his finite pupa period.

It was as if he saw the branch­es nod

In sympathy as though to one bereaved

Of self-renewing Life itself, of God,

Of Life itself with God.

 

Deliverance and Light received,

He saw the great pine green and living, leaved

On both a sunny and a shady side.

“Like God!” Now breathing freely he believed.

His Self, not God, had died.

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