! ! Sonnet: On His Deafness Poem by Michael Shepherd

‘Speak up! No need to shout – I’m not t h a t deaf..! ’
-do I have any real right to complain
if years of partial listening have brought
now partial hearing in their fateful train?

O Milton – isn’t it curious: the blind
evoke our instant feelings of compassion;
while deafness calls some idiot state to mind –
evoking, far from pity – irritation!

Those saintly mystics would just praise their God
that He, to speed their simple saintliness,
brings outer deafness, so that inner Word
in cloistered silence brings a greater bliss..

So may I bear affliction in good part:
and hear a greater, louder word in heart.