The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1968, Síða 27

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
25
And to my wonder I heard the lark a-making melody;
And I felt strong upward yearnings,
And a desire to kill my sweet monotony,
Preferring pain, or toil, or any new dimension,
To kill a joy and wait its resurrection.
So I began to rise again,
Weeding myself as I went;
Delighting in a wiser, freer discipline,
Discovering some weeds which were not weeds,
But labelled so by prejudice and ignorance;
And flowers which were not flowers.
I chose with fuller understanding,
Beginning a new dream of well-tended fields,
Deep-loamed and mustard-free,
And sowing good seeds,
More yieldful, more universal and man-loving;
Sowing for eternity.
★ ★ ★
Weeds, weeds, weeds,
Creeping inward like a living death;
Preying on our weaknesses,
Malign, tempting, life-sucking.
We must learn to live with them.
Weeds, weeds, weeds;
Indigenous to our clay;
We cannot kill them.
Christ, (Oh, thank God!) He understood,
Pitying that divinity
Prisoned in flesh.
The weed:
Our stimulation;
Our challenge;
Our point of bearings;
Where life takes two directions,
And we leave unity to God.
Weeds, weeds everywhere;
Deep-rooted as the sins of man;
Silently, steadily, stealthily,
Crowding the soul,
And the wholesome fruitage of the earth.