Poetry Day - Relapse

This is not the most heartening of poems. But I like it just because it’s unashameably human – and hey, to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Relapse

CS Lewis

Out of the wound we pluck

The shrapnel. Thorns we squeeze

Out of the hand. Even poison forth we suck,

And after pain have ease.

But images that grow

Within the soul have life

Like cancer and, often cut, live on below

The deepest of the knife,

Waiting their time to shoot

At some defenceless hour

Their poison, unimpaired, at the heart’s root,

And, like a golden shower,

Unanswerably sweet,

Bright with returning guilt,

Fatally in a moment’s time defeat

Our brazen towers long-built;

And all our former pain

And all our surgeon’s care

Is lost, and all the unbearable (in vain

Borne once) is still to bear.

Picture from Photo Dictionary.