PRIEST AND PEASANT

You are ill, Davis, ill in mind;
An old canker, to your kind
Peculiar, has laid waste the brain's
Potential richness in delight
And beauty; and your body grows
Awry like an old thorn for lack
Of the soil's depth; and sickness there
Uncurls slowly its small tongues
Of fungus that shall, thickening, swell
And choke you, while your few leaves
Are green still.
                And so you work
In the wet fields and suffer pain
And loneliness as a tree takes
The night's darkness, the day's rain;
While I watch you, and pray for you,
And so increase my small store
Of credit in the bank of God,
Who sees you suffer and me pray
And touches you with the sun's ray,
That heals not, yet blinds my eyes
And seals my lips as Job's were sealed
Imperiously in the old days.