Dregs

Dregs

A Poem by David Plantinga
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Job answers

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Although that shadow’s tread was light

And its cold presence absence massed,

A darker darkness to contrast,

A hole in the black cloak of night,

Its stealthy passing did disturb

And woke a sleeper from his dreams.

Such plunging darkness almost gleams

And its dense nearness must perturb.

That wraith was once a man of wrath,

One who would punish, and ordained

To fill that liking, then constrained

To follow down a gruesome path.


Where is almighty God, and who,

And how commands the stars to hide,

Or flips the heavens on their side,

To quench the day, and night renew?

His presence is too great to blot

One corner of a chamber’s gloom,

And everywhere He must subsume

The crossroads and the lonely spot.


How can defiant souls contend

With Him, or what discernment tell

Where His stern, righteous judgment fell?

Yet His law says what will offend.

We cannot see, but we can hear,

And knowing His decrees, I err,

And sinning willfully incur

The sentence for a mutineer.

Lying cannot refute His word

Nor pleading lighten grievous guilt,

And if He rules that I have spilt

Some of the bitter cup He poured

I’ll hold it up for Him to fill

It to the brim once more, and gulp

That potion to its dregs and pulp.

I will surrender to His will,

But truly, the contrite can pray

For pardon, and when they confess,

Meekness may balance sinfulness.

But if, defiantly, I say

I’m perfect, my worst secrets prove

That I’m perverse, and if I curse

The day I’m born I’m even worse,

Too bad for chiding to improve.

A wretch, I shouldn’t curse that day

And my accession to this world

Has scorched the calendar, and curled

Its page to cinders charred away.





© 2022 David Plantinga


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Added on May 29, 2022
Last Updated on May 29, 2022
Tags: #Job, #theodicy, #Old Testament

Author

David Plantinga
David Plantinga

Pittsburgh, PA



About
For shorter poems I'm experimenting with ballad and In Memoriam stanzas. more..

Writing