The enemy's inroads

The enemy's inroads through the forests of my flesh
go deep.

He seeks not open country. See how he hides between
rows of manicured foliage where he works unseen
or by night, insinuating out of sight
subtle trappings, seductions, and thoughts unclean,
while watchmen and woodsman are away, or sleep.

Many they be who stand along the march and fend,
many on the roads aware, beating the bush to find

the fever feeding on the shadows there
— oh, and the woodsman,

helpless one brandishing one axe against the ambush,
— all on the Day depend.

Deep in the darkest and thickest ravine, or high
in the narrowest, windiest pass, where trees

rise so close beside the trail one can scarcely squeeze by,
there comes the enemy out from his covert nigh,
uncomfortable, mean — oh, how he taunts,
afraid of one woodsman's axe even then,
— by mere suggestion, how he plies his victories.

Hand-bound and toe-nailed in a death-dusty heap,
would man were not jailed so, in such misery weep,

— but oh, at the summit, skirting the tree line
the first whispering of warmth, rumor of radiance divine,
and in streams gravitating to the gullies below
the same lustre of healing in the animate flow,
— but watchmen and woodsman most certainly know

also hidden a ransoming fire does not sleep, though
the enemy's inroads through the forests of my flesh
go deep.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx—Romanós