World Poetry Day

So, today it is apparently World Poetry Day. Who knew? It is "to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world". This is a cause we are pleased to support here at Something This Foggy Day. Choosing a poem was the difficult task. I could deliberate on this all day. But I fell to remembering some favourites, and it has been nearly three years since this one featured, so I have decided to post it again. This is a poem, by CS Lewis, that entered straight into my inner sanctum of poems.

Picture from here.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:

I talk of love—a scholar's parrot may talk Greek—

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm. And everything you are was making

My heart into a bridge by which I might get back

From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.

C.S. Lewis