How like a Prison

How like a prison
is the mind
whose struggles
can no answer find;
whose twisting paths
and much-spent ways
do bring no rest
into the days;
whose roads and
thoroughfares would bend,
yet find no peace,
and still not mend
the heart beneath it,
buried deep,
which, though not happy,
cannot weep.

How like a gate
the mind doth seem,
whilst holding secrets
deep within,
and yet no key can
open thence
for there's no lock
that bars entrance.

How like a fortress,
great and tall,
that's made of walls
within a wall,
by which no hero
hopes to claim
that through its conquest
earned he fame,
the mind unconquered
ever stays
and we still lost
upon its ways.

How like a tempest
tossing us
upon the waves
of self dis-trust
'til neither back
nor front we see,
and drunken
in our reverie
do blindly grope
upon the shore,
and drown in waters
deep no more.

How like a prison, yes,
and no,
where freedom's found
as further in you go;
the sacred place
where no man's eye
can gaze on what
therein doth lie;
where solitarily
confined
each man must
his soul lonely find,
and in that soul-
the Holy One,
into Whose sight
we all are come.

For only He
can freedom give
Who though not dying
truly lives,
and in Whose mind
we all are caught
and find there we are
all, but naught.

19 Tishrei 5774