PROTAGONIST.

The fight was unequal, bitter and always new, I saw how my enemy gained on me and how he drew My strength, my youth, my soul from my shivering frame; Yet have I not been beaten—I faced him whenever he came. When he stabbed I watched how he did it—Poison, I studied the cup, Flayed me with whips, I girded the bleedings up; Hunger, imprisonment—all these I wrote in my book; I have learned all the enemy’s purpose, I know every look. I have conned every gesture and gotten by heart all his guile, Yet still comes the fear and the watchfulness under my smile; For hard as I struggle to outwit his plot to betray me, He holds that utterest thing that can utterly slay me— Still do I turn and defy the face of him creeping; “Now that I know thee, thou Life, thou art locked in my keeping; Dungeoned, thou Horror, in creative cells of desire, Ringed in the widening rings of my aspirate fire— I, your Creator, by steady implacable strife, Shall give men and women a lovelier thing to call ‘Life.’”