Seeing the land of God a graze away from touching sense

Volunteers high a will, insistent, commandeering awe

Taken in at one sweep by volte-face Romantic lays

Bled on an otherness parboiled puling counterfactual sighs

Darks of a thick black gloom bedim the world, with inky stains

Indelible thumbprints, palimpsests set snugly smudged:

So smother all brain-dreams

Murdering not the will, no, no, but politic amain

Kills gently, what would be, had blemish made no blot

Lodged eye-impediments, snagging nasty sties, constrain the lids

Eyes will not open; flick, flick, blink, fits go involuntary

Casts of one’s own disorder throw out objects all to one side

Doodles in double vision, draw one off from single sight

Anguish-prolific pains consume; emollient creams applied

Encrust, grow stale, a fright of dandruff flakes, it sheds its bits

All over what was hearty-hale, at heights once, ever eagling;

Now like an end-of-pier light opera foundered, ships-in bales

Yes, all we waul our failures, hollow cries loud heavenwards

Salvoes of sorrows, braveries beaten, down thrust at God’s door

But yet St. Peter, mishap clown and bungler of great store

Heaven appoints our mentor;

We disenchanted gamers for the sempiternal shore