God Speaks

Mitt Ann

Poem. Previously published in Armstrong Literary, Spring 2022.

What may be more glorious than the sky’s expanse?
of fibrous clouds / puffy disentombed bodies –
Roll on! Roll on! Row on.

God walks dully along. / Drowning man
un-abandoned / until
one knight comes, a thief arrives
at this raucous garden with a sword.

Stands before
                        sealed mysteries/
redundant prophecies/ it is an oblong bible,
yet, God speaks orotund to the blind.

God Speaks

• Line 1: Cf. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman
• Line 4: “God walks dully along”; Cf. “walking dully along” in “Musée des Beaux Art” by W. H. Auden
• Line 7: “with a sword”, Cf. “Miss Avery/Comes out into the garden with the sword” in “In Time of War’ by W. H. Auden
• Line 9: Cf. “Sealed mystery” in The Gospel of the Sons of God (1891), by Ven. J. M. WILSON, Vicar of Rochdale, and Archdeacon of Manchester.
• Line 10: “redundant prophecies”; Cf. “these redundant locks” in Samson Agonistes (1671) by John Milton
• Line 12: “orotund”; Cf. “My own voice, orotund sweeping and final” in Song of Myself by W. H. Auden.