It's Best To Stay A Pilgrim Poem by Denis Martindale

Why do ugly things happen to beautiful people,
Breaking their hearts and twisting their minds,
Causing sorrows that fester within and leaving without,
Such that their very souls lie dormant, vulnerable,
Listening to the whispers of demons, falling prey...
Until they pray and God delivers them from evil?

And where are the angels of mercy that are spoken of,
Are they merely the legends of yesteryear,
Lost in the ancient wearisome turmoils of time,
No more the powers they once used to be,
Or gently avoiding trouble, flying round in circles,
Pretending they can do nothing, nothing at all?

Surely the all-seeing, all-knowing God of eternity
Has foreknowledge and could intervene,
A thunderbolt warning at an appropriate time,
Sending demons scurrying away in abject fear?
But life seems so random in its changing tides,
Its marches forward and its sudden stops,
Then the building and the knocking down
With empires rising, merely to crumble in the dust...

If empires come and go, then why shouldn't Man?
Yet Man consists of more than men themselves,
Surely women and children comprise their part
And deserve their portion of a wholesome life?
Or are we merely mortals, vulnerable victims,
The pawns within some cosmic game of chess?
No more thought of once removed from the board,
Tossed into our own little boxes like coffins,
Cast aside till tomorrow's game or later today...

I have feelings and so do you, yet what of these?
Are feelings merely the necessity of life,
The inborn streams that prove one's sorrows true,
The reality of individual sacrificial pain,
Made manifest for every wise seeing eye to see,
The outpourings of scarlet and crimson bloodstains,
Drying 'neath a solemn, uncaring sun and moon?

If not for love, the father of forgiveness,
Who could stand the rigours of times gone by
Or submit to future tyrannies as yet await?
If not for faith, who then abides beyond the pain,
To stand as one who's called a conqueror,
A proven valiant champion and deservedly so?

But this I know, of all truths Man has ever known,
I cannot survive alone, nor would I seek to try,
While there is still humanity and charity,
Compassion borne of wondrous grace,
While there is but one miracle abiding still,
Waiting in the wings, even the wings of angels...
It's best to stay a pilgrim, to pray and persevere...


Denis Martindale, copyright, October 2013.