POEMS BY ISAAC ROSENBERG
I am sick of priests and forms,
This rigid dry-boned refinement:
As ladies’ perfumes are
Obnoxious to stern natures,
This miasma of a rotting god
Is to me.
Who has made of the forest a park?
Who has changed the wolf to a dog?
And put the horse in harness?
And man's mind in a groove?
I heard the one spirit cry in them,
"Break this metamorphosis,
Disenchant my lying body;
Only putrefaction is free,
And I, Freedom, am not.
Moses! Touch us, thou!"
There shall not be a void or calm,
But a fury fill the veins of time—
Whose limbs had begun to rot,
Who had flattered my stupid torpor
With an easy and mimic energy,
And drained my veins with a paltry marvel
More monstrous than battle;
For the soul ached and went out dead in pleasure.
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