If All Be So ...
If
all be so as great and sad men say
Of
causes just and movers prime of men
To
their most heart-felt deeds of love
That
all the love and all the willing pain
Springs
from a sun’s convulsion, atom’s drift,
Dream
of a restless Buddha, Ego, Mother, Id,
Class
prejudice, or puppet-chains predestined …
Listen then. If Bobbie’s
joke about the D –
She’d
worked for three weeks – Gene’s comment
As
she passed the popcorn and some Kleenex
And
Ada
’s silence when the teapot broke
At
two AM the night before Huff’s test
Come
from atoms ages past and complex
Variables
irrational in chaos.
If
Ben, who wore his press card in his hat
The
night we were so worried; Pat
Who
called from
California
about
Cuba
And
Chuck with all his gentle hairy jokes;
Are
merely Bourgeois – what-so-ever
That
may mean – if it be so
That
these people come from all those things
Which
reduce but down to Chance
(For
Chance is far too poor a word for that
That
made these people, these dear people)
Then
knock not Chance for whom no name –
Not
even that of God – could be too good.
– Mary Meaders (Brown) Ezzell