“And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. / Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, more Teasdale wrestling with spirituality:

Mastery, Sara Teasdale

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control—
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.


This is the second of a seven-poem cycle called “Songs Out of Sorrow” from her 1917 collection Love Songs, the one that won the first Pulitzer for poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith, Mary Oliver.