The Burning Belt Poem by Frank Wright

The Burning Belt Frank Wright
Was it loneliness
Or was it fear:
That aching pressure
Which trembled like a spear
Within Your flaming mind?
Or did You long for life's
Warm-pulsing firmness,
Your formless deity to bind...?
Oh spirit of the blood
And dumbness, You spoke
And we were bound in
Bone and brain, a cloak
Of mortality cast o'er
The fire of our souls...
Life... it was the phenomenal existence
Of a few strange hours
In which we laughed
In which we screamed, insane
At darker phantoms across the cold
And metal shadows, trying in vain
To find the dream You dreamed
Among the bleak fossils
Of forgotten prayers... oh god, how bright ou little faith seemed
Then! But darkness rose from
The deeper depths of night
And ebbed against our humanity;
And like the wings of a paper- kite,
Our trust in life snapped then:
Out of the unseen light we melt
Away into the nothingness of death...
Where You chain us with your burning belt!