Martin Robertson

Now and Then

Waiting

Not yet the necessary word awakes

nor stir the lips,

but helpless till pass by this long eclipse

the spirit waits,

tasting in small what the true sufferer knows:

the lonely deaf, the blind

who fumbling in the paralytic dark

await no dawn, and those

exiled, to whom the hostile and the kind

are facets of one strange, barbarian heart.

Their bonds remain, but you shall to the vow

and the fulfilment come,

though in the heart sits pinioned, strengthless, dumb

the natural angel now.