The Prisoner

‘Poems from prison! About what?’ ‘Life and God.’ ‘God in prison? Friend, you trifle with me. His face, perhaps, at the bars, fading like life.’ ‘He came in with the warder, striving with him. Where else did the severity of the man spring from, but awareness of a charity he must overcome?’ ‘The blows, then, were God chastening the beloved! Who was the more blessed, the dispenser or receiver of them?’ ‘It is the same outside. Bars, walls but make the perspective clear.Deus absconditus! We ransack the heavens, the distance between stars; the last place we look is in prison, his hideout in flesh and bone.’ ‘You believe, then?’ ‘The poems are witness. If his world contracted, it was to give birth to the larger vision. Not meadows empty of him, animal eyes, impersonal as glass, communicate God. On the bare walls of a cell the oppressor watches the diminishing of his human shadow, as he withdraws from the light.’