Dear God! a life as lived between extremes,
Either the one, intractable enforcement
Of chastity that's anchored to false dreams
Pretending to morality's endorsement;
Or else the opposite, abandonment
Of all pretense to individuation
In love's pursuit, to moral decrement -
These both I've known, but never mediation.
God, like as land that suffers dearth and flood
In alternating waves, thus have I been;
Either too cold, or else too hot the blood,
And never gradiation in between.
Now after years of heaven, years of hell,
My body that was strong, is but a shell.