free-verse32 lines

Henry Phipps

I was the Sunday-school superintendent,

The dummy president of the wagon works

And the canning factory,

Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;

My son the cashier of the bank,

Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,

My week days spent in making money,

My Sundays at church and in prayer.

In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:

Of money, master and man, made white

With the paint of the Christian creed.

And then:

The bank collapsed.

I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -

The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;

The rotten bolts, the broken rods;

And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again

In a new devourer of life,

When newspapers, judges and money-magicians

Build over again.

I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,

Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,

And knowing "'the upright shall dwell in the land

But the years of the wicked shall be shortened."

Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered

A cancer in my liver.

I was not, after all, the particular care of God

Why, even thus standing on a peak

Above the mists through which I had climbed,

And ready for larger life in the world,

Eternal forces

Moved me on with a push.