The Moral Turn Poem by John a'Beckett

From saints who then accepted death: something we learn
that though cut short, their lives were full, did not accomplish less
in living to the richest point, they took the moral turn

The Convent offered Sister Edith Stein a shelter to return;
she stared- with Nazis sending Catholics of Jewish blood to Auszewitz-
death in the face, not to deny her race: she took the moral turn

In that place Maximilian Kolbe knew that he might burn
A German name would let him off; he’d not deny his Polishness
From that self-effacing grace the Schustaffen would learn

Giving his life for another man’s- he knew what that would earn:
death by starvation in the cell- he comforted the men -a pain imagineless
He had no qualms in doing this - he’d made the moral turn

to Heaven or that eternal place for which good Romantics yearn
but Kolbe’s dream of building a community of brothers was then twice blest
on earth when that same man whose life he saved would learn

that what one man gives to another then that other can return.
A church is built.A humble Krakow priest becomes a Pope, no less
counts blessed those he knew from whom that something he could learn
To put aside an acting future laid out for him and make the moral turn.