The Prisoner

‘Poems from prison! About
what?’
  ‘Life and God.’ ‘God
in prison? Friend, you trifle
with me. His face, perhaps,
at the bars, fading
like life.’
  ‘He came in
with the warder, striving
with him. Where else
did the severity of the man
spring from, but awareness
of a charity he must
overcome?’
  ‘The blows, then,
were God chastening
the beloved! Who
was the more blessed, the
dispenser or receiver
of them?’
  ‘It is the same
outside. Bars, walls
but make the perspective
clear. Deus absconditus!
We ransack the heavens,
the distance between
stars; the last place we look
is in prison, his hideout
in flesh and bone.’
  ‘You believe,
then?’
  ‘The poems
are witness. If his world
contracted, it was to give birth
to the larger vision. Not meadows
empty of him, animal
eyes, impersonal
as glass, communicate
God. On the bare walls
of a cell the oppressor watches
the diminishing of his
human shadow, as
he withdraws from the light.’