Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RENUNCIATION, by JAMES OPPENHEIM


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RENUNCIATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Have we given up thy spell, renunciation?
Last Line: Then in her arms she held him: he was hers...
Subject(s): Life; Pain; Suffering; Misery


HAVE we given up thy spell, Renunciation?
Do we dream that we can be born without first dying?
That joy comes with no pain?

Once the world heard thy lips crying: "Renounce! renounce!"
Oh, calm-eyed winged one that hovers near us...
But now they preach of the unalloyed pleasures of the faithful,
And of the gains that fly to the needy soul all effortless!

Yet do I know that desiring my dearest friend,
I did not have him till I went from him,
Lonely for his sake through a month of days...

Yet do I know how songs are written...
The singer moves away from faces,
He goes from blessed comfort to cold agony,
Putting away the man in him to be the poet...

Yet do I know of a mother (so of all mothers)
Who could not have the child biding in her womb
Till, shrieking, she had given him up,
And from her body the small new life was sundered...
Then in her arms she held him: he was hers...





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