Friendly
Flesh
Flesh
that faithful ages
Elected
to the devil’s team,
Flesh
that falls and ages,
So deemed
deserving disesteem,
What
deaths
By the thousand or million, to be blunt,
Can be laid at the doors of prick and cunt
(Bar
all, as authors of all breaths)?
A
wonder, soft and stiff,
Not
ground on stones of the abstract,
Roused
by air of an if
To a
heat that melts thought in act,
Too
much
By far of our innocent stuff’s arraigned
For frauds and faults, which they that have disdained
Should
bless, as often as they touch.
Not
kiss nor clasp nor thrust
Has
laid the hills and cities waste,
But
the holy and just,
The
peacemakers, makers of haste
To build
Heavens on earth, have been founders of hells.
Hallowed be the flesh that hollows and swells:
Not
by this were the limepits filled.
John Gibbens, from The Promise
Go
to the Trading Post to buy The Promise
