Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FOR I AM YET A CHILD, by FRANZ WERFEL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FOR I AM YET A CHILD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O master, rend thou me!
Last Line: Pour thyself deathless through all things: we are!!


O Master, rend Thou me!
For I am yet a child.
And still I dare to sing,
And to name Thee,
And say of everything:
We are!

My lips are parted, now,
Before Thou hadst me taste thy bitter pain.
My limbs are sound, I know not how
The greybeard rusts with age's stain,
I never clutched the bed-posts with the strain
Of women in their heavy hour.

I never struggled through the weary night
Like cabbies' nags, those noble brutes,
Who long since fled the world through which they go!
(From magical shattering footsteps, to and fro,
Of passing women, from all sounds of delight.)
I never trudged through endless vistas like four-footed mutes.

I never was a sailor with oil lacking,
With the thousand waters rising to mock the sun,
When signal-shots were cracking,
When rockets shook, aflare,
I never knelt to Thee, Thy anguished one,
O Master, seeking Thee in a final prayer.

I never was a child, maimed in the factory
Of these too aching times: scarred flesh, and bones awry,
I never starved in a vile shelter, I
Know not how mothers put out their eyes lest they see,
Nor know, when empresses nod, the agony.
All you who die, I know not how you die!

Do I then know the lamp, do I know the hood,
The air, the moon, the autumn, and all the flutter
Of yeasty winds that spume and sputter?
Do I know a face, evil or good?
Do I know the proud false words that girls can mutter?
Do I know how flattery brings the ache of the rood?

But Thou, O Master, descended, even for me,
With torments thousandfold Thy limbs have quivered,
With every woman hast Thou been delivered,
And died in dung, in paper-scraps outflung,
In circus seals hast Thou been cursed and with their bodies shivered,
And cavaliers, taking a whore, took Thee.

O Master, rend Thou me!
What is this stolid, pitiable pleasure?
I am not worthy of Thy wound's red treasure.
Grace me with martyrdom, agony on agony!
The death of the whole world my heart can measure.
O Master, rend Thou me!

Until in every worn-out rag I die,
Until in every cat and jade I perish,
As a soldier, sicken under the desert's eye,
Until, oh, sinner that I am, the sacrament upon my tongue most bitterly shall
lie,
Until upon the awful bed my bitten body cry,
Stretched toward the form that I, the scorned, must cherish.

When I am strewn on all the winds, an airy avatar,
In all things dwelling, yea, even in smoke,
Then, God, blaze from Thy briers as a star!
(I am Thy child.)
Thou also, Word, burst forth, which I as portent spoke,
Pour thyself deathless through all things: We are!!





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