Pity the Man by Christian Wiman
"Soul is the oath that he must keep, loyal to this country called Alone."
Pity the Man
by Christian Wiman
Pity the man who’s mastered all
the dialects of silence,
who suffers the arpeggios of snow
and in the bright kaleidoscope of fall,
as the colors combine and crescendo,
hears the oak tree plead release.
Pity the man who understands
the gift and gravity of what is not,
who lives to its conclusion
the doctrine of Saint Paul:
if being more means being less,
God’s truest form is godlessness.
Pity the man whom history missed,
who, as the lie like a parasite
ate brain by brain into a single sheep,
remained immune.
Soul is the oath that he must keep,
loyal to this country called Alone.
Pity the man whose last command
comes from a cloud or a cup of tea,
his task to stand with and to withstand
the hard wind and what it blows,
to reconcile the rage in the rapist’s eyes
with the power that perfects the rose.
(Do you know such a man? I do.)
And this, among the many gorgeous lines,
"Pity the man whom history missed,
who, as the lie like a parasite
ate brain by brain into a single sheep,
remained immune."
Is there any more proof that we need poets now than this poem?
Wiman remains one of the absolute best, most morally bracing and instructive writers we have. This is beautiful work.