Alicerçando Poesia # 226 - Djuna Barnes 1892/1982

The Personal God


Creeds of a kind we've always had
To crouch by our dim fireside.
And here some gossiping wench arose
And the worth of some good name died
Yea, the whole stale world went rocking
To the sting of her poisoned heels,
As a sky-car mangles the stars
For lack of the guiding wheels.
Though all of us sin most fully
When hushed in our neighbourly sweats,
Yet sometimes a man goes empty
For the urge of things, and forgets.
We stick to the same old pattern,
All daubed and kissed and marred,
But I'll use my own gray plaster
And I'll build me a personal God.
I'll breathe out his flaccid belly,
I'll cup out his sightless eyes,
I'll sob in the labour bending,
As I handle his plastic thighs.
And he shall be rash of judgment,
And slow in the use of the rod.
My God shall giggle in spite of himself,
In the way of a personal God.
He shall heed no other's message;
He shall follow no dusty path;
He'll believe in no written pity;
Nor yet in a written wrath;
He'll breed no circle of platters
Nor take root in your yearly fees;
He'll ask no patient toll of tears
Nor the terrible toll of the knees.
So, when all of you flock to your fancy,
The God that is always the same,
My God shall halt and be human
And his judgment shall halt and be lame
Yea, the devil came down your pass,
Blown in on the strength of the breeze,
And because your Gods were duplicates
He shattered you on his knees.
I'll work my clay as I find it,
All hushed as it lies in the sod,
And he shall be built for better or worse
In the way of a Personal God

From The Book of Repulsive Women and other poems