I wrote this after reading Oscar Wilde's *The Picture of Dorian Gray* and his epic poem *The Ballad of Reading Gaol*. It has a cadence similar to the latter, and I wanted to explore here Wilde's sense of "sin" in those two works.
Few men have met the raging scorn
I keep well locked away
For those who perish in the morn
And sleep all blessèd day
Then, up all night, well hid from light,
They frolic in their play
I have no pity, nor can find
A soothing word to say
Though in the city, once, while blind,
I used to act that way
Stayed up all night, well hid from sight,
And frolicked in my play
I keep a sim’lar scorn for those
Who beat me in my youth
Till, in despair and blind disgust,
I triumphed; that’s the truth!
Yet vict’ry’s taste lies bitter still
Behind each aging tooth
Man cannot beat the beast within
Nor soothe his savage breast;
We’re animals beneath the skin
One sin’s the final test
Though animals commit no sin,
We humans do our best
So what to do with all this rage
But tame it into Art?
The pen, the paint, the sound, the stage
Will let me stand apart
And see myself as others do
Unbound by aching heart
In truth, I hold no shame for sins
Committed in the past
By others ‘gainst myself, or mine;
No sins are meant to last
While in Art’s corridor divine
Lie days of future passed
So to my earthbound task I bend
In quite a sacred state
To soothe the pain that knows no end
Before I’m gray as slate
And base emotion no more rends
This heavy human pate
And so, to you, my listening friend,
I pen this verse to see
If we can, while alive, transcend
Our root hypocrisy
Admitting sin at least begins
The struggle to be free
Yet no man’s judgment is the last—
Of that we can be sure;
Though death by rope, gas, jolt, or blast
Ensure no sins endure
Though by earth’s final day, so vast,
We’ll all become manure
I have no judgment on this fact
No sorrow for this fate
Till then, we trudge along this tract
To see what lies in wait
Till God’s released, no more intact,
This stark, sad, spinning plate.
True love, if so, flies high above
Those things we learn to hate.
"In truth, I hold no shame for sins / Committed in the past" I used to. A little, I suppose, but now I do not, excpet maybe to the Supreme Being. But, yeah, like you commented on my poem, I've certainly been there, done that. Very good writing here.
The Double Mirrors and Ones and Zeros theories, by Dylan Tauber. Parallel mirrors in our minds produce a vision of the infinite. Love is all that exists. Free PDF download.
This book chronicles an infinite allegoric odyssey of Absolute Awakening in which a learned man, a mute man, and a recluse woman are the principal players. The mute and the recluse are the learned one's Teachers and Guides on his journey of Enlighten
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