God+by+Issac+Rosenberg

In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned! His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls. The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power, On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry, He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more. But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze, Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws, And he would weigh the heavier on those after. Who rests in God’s mean flattery now? Your wealth Is but his cunning to make death more hard. Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking. And he has made the market for your beauty Too poor to buy, although you die to sell. Only that he has never heard of sleep; <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">And when the cats come out the rats are sly. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Here we are [|safe] till he slinks in at dawn <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">And in the morning some pale wonder ceases. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Out of us, but it is as hair of us, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">And only in the hush no wind stirs it. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">And restlessness still shadows the lost ways. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">The fingers shut on voices that pass through, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Where blind farewells are taken easily .... <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!