Fire in the wilderness

Fire in the wilderness, and all those

Beatuous desert flowers you had looked after so carefully

Gone, incinerated, in the blazing flames.

Those verses you had strung

Equally carefully as poems,

Incinerated in the test of time

And unappreciated in the cacophony of attentions

In this modern world.

What next? What next?

Whatever are you going to do next, darling?

What does a poet do when his

Poems go unread?

Does he give up speaking to an unlistening world

Or does he carry on as a prophet,

Putting out sombre words of life and death,

Just as they are, 

Without beautifying, rhyme, or meter

For anyone who would care to listen?

Am I to blame for writing of life and death

And not of romance and roses?

For I write of Thee, God, and hopefully for Thee,

And what we Thy children truly long for

Is a life after death with Thee

Afterword:

Fire, fire, fire, in the wilderness of my heart

And after the flames of pain and suffering

Have done their work,

All that I want now

    is

        God