CONSUMMATION

I think it was Bishop Butler who said that he was all his life
struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses,
which would have maddened him, if he had relaxed
the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment.
Coleridge

Is there no blessing in these limbs?
Or is all the body to be consumed
By the starving soul? Eyes to see,
Ears to hear, hands and lips to hold
And kiss, have they no sight no sound
No touch which is theirs, and only theirs?
Have they no knowledge of their own?

Or is every gesture, every spoken word,
Every silent thought, every feeling
Unfathomed but the soul’s beginning,
A splinter of the complete idea
A fragment of the frame of creation,
Broken boughs and branches torn
From life’s habitual growth
Waiting to be gathered, to unite and die
In the soul’s fire, only lit
When the body burns, and the soul leaps
In the light and delight of the flickering flame?

Or are these limbs just here to cover,
To cover and comfort another,
Another shivering silent soul?
Do we bear children to bear children,
To preserve that empty space,
That silence where sits the silent soul
That would sing, that could ring out?

And if we do not burn, are we not
Dead limbs and dead eyes
Lost for ever amongst the dead leaves
In a damp wood decaying here
On this autumnal earth, are we not
Lost in a silent, meaningless season?

Does the soul demand, does the soul
Devour: are we quenched forever
If quenched for one unattended hour?
Are we not blessed for having walked,
In sunlight, through the wrought-iron gate,
For having struggled with our fate?