A Broken Edifice

Sonnet — Daily Poetry for The Master of Works #13

My gestures a trifle worth of my heart
Are all I have for the altar of Thy love.
A leaf or a half-withered flower now
This mendicant’s gift unto Thy bounteous light.

A tempest fierce is reeling under my feet
And rising into my limbs to scuttle and maim.
Thy gesture infinite into my finite self seem
Like an illumined Heaven descending into my night.

The beast and the demon still jealously guard
The gates through which the embodied spirit must pass,
And fire and rage and Hell’s caress
Must its mead and joy be in Thy labour apportioned.

A trifle of my spirit is my own human mess;
Accept it as Thou wouldst accept a broken edifice.