This is the first smaple of my prose-poetry at this site.

SHAME

But grant, O God, that when he dies
One prayer should rise!
-Arthur Rimbaud in The Symbolist Poem, Dutton, NY, 1967, p.183.


Shame, it would appear, is confined
to a few1 and, before my brain
has ceased to play its endless game,
its far-flung war, its fatiguing dance,
it would appear that, for me, it does
not operate with sufficient intensity
to exert its mighty, leavening force.
The stagnant vapours of my life
on all these fattening forms
seem so often to triumph.

And this feeble fool,
this troublesome child,
like some wild animal
will leave his stench behind
while God grants a last prayer,
pure water and the possibilities
of a garden of happiness.

Ron Price
19 October 1996

1 Baha’u’llah