! ! Belovéd Victims Of Themself Poem by Michael Shepherd

There are those who, for
the deepest reasons even they forget,

offer themselves upon the altar
of the three afflictions:

body, mind and heart: suffer
everything that they can find;

and strangely, yet we love them;
do what we can; fail; sigh;

and start afresh – as they,
bruised, self-tortured, in that cause

which we can only hope one day
that they themselves – if they survive –

may realise in a burst of glory:
long-awaited, pent-up glory:

dissolve, surrender with a relief
as great as friendship, as the human race,

into the love we always had for them
which is as nothing, to the love

which they at last discover that they have
for their immortal self. Yes, how much we love them

beyond all reason; seeing ourselves in them;
loving love; as ever love calls us to do.