Hugo Schwyzer

This was in this month’s First Things (which arrived today) and I had to make it my Thursday short poem. It’s from the final collection of the late Czeslaw Milosz:

Distance

At a certain distance I followed behind you, ashamed to come closer
Though you have chosen me as a worker in your vineyard and I pressed the grapes of your wrath.
To every one according to his nature: what is crippled shall not always be healed.
I do not even know whether one can be free, for I have toiled against my will.
Taken by the neck like a boy who kicks and bites
Till they sit him at a desk and order him to make letters,
I wanted to be like others but was given the bitterness of separation,
Believed I would be an equal among equals but woke up a stranger.
Looking at manners as if I arrived from a different time.
Guilty of apostasy from the communal rite.
There are so many whose are good and just, those were rightly chosen
And wherever you walk the earth, they accompany you.
Perhaps it is true that I loved you secretly
But without strong hope to be as close to you as they are.

Well, “if that don’t just beat all”, as one friend of mine from Oklahoma can get away with saying with a straight face.

At times, he has been my best friend. When I was a child, like so many others, I thought of Him as Aslan from the C.S. Lewis “Narnia” books. I’ve rejected him outright. I’ve embraced Him with embarrassing enthusiasm (the “slain in the spirit sort”). I’ve ignored Him. I’ve denied Him. I’ve come back on my knees to Him. (I can’t even decide whether to capitalize “him” or not. Sheesh.)

I’ve called Him my lover, and dreamed of Him at night holding me, His blood and his sweat all over me. I’ve raged at Him, told him to “fuck off” a thousand times over — and cried for Him. But even before I knew his name, I knew I loved him.

This is the best poem about faith I’ve read in a heck of a long time.