Albert Cook
SESTINA II
How did our heart admit the spreading fear
That undennined our peace and love for home?
Soldiers in crises save their lives by fear
To down it after battle, but our fear
Battening on shadows, grows and grows with time.
It
gives us no relief to garden fear
Or plot its painful vectors; still we fear
To fail in situations where we find
Contingencies the sound refuse to find
Who face a stream of facts immune to fear.
Brave imminent disgrace or run away
Seems the bleak choice, that blights us either way.
We can recover peace no other way
Than quelling where it rose the source of fear
That seeped into our will and washed away
The trail preserving,
if
we lagged, a way
Back to the blessings of a bounded home.
Stinging God's wounds, we scorned the rocky way
Up giddy peaks and shunned the broad high way
Where flocks bewildered riot killing time.
Our pride impelled us to consume our time
Exploring a thick, unfrequented way
Where one who held out long enough might find
A substitute for love, that
all
can find .
We spend, brands in the dark, who burn to find
An Eden God resigned to drift away
When Adam acquiesced to bite and find
How God knows bliss, but made his offspring find
Poisoned the fountainhead of will. We fear
