"And When Night Comes..." - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“And When Night Comes…”

“And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much    you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him.”

—Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

They twist her witness with bent arguments
Scholarly papers, harsh editorials
Like smoke and ashes obscuring the heavens
Telling her in retrospect who she is

But in her end, and in her beginning
She left all quarrels on the altar of man
And gave herself on the Altar of God
Because her only crime was loving Him

     and us

Those who emend her – again they martyr her:
They do not know what else to do with her