Favour Turned Sour

A frequent favor is soon a debt: It makes cupped hands close into fists. Now that my hands are empty, I see your breast heave with cold dark clouds— A sure sign of the storm to come. A pool of slime gathers in your eyes That just yesterday were wide and glad But now both narrow, each to a slit. The fault, I know, is that a favor has gone missing, So I the giver must hear the hissing. Each time my favors to mist dissolve, Your inner angels and demons to fists come. Whom you cheer tells me focus: Whether you dwell on scores or dwell on sores. I see you cheer the angels When it's my scores that you recall, Scores that I gained whilst my favors flowed; But it's demons that you cheer When all you see are sores That now hurt you where lost favors once soothed. I feel your pain, so this much I’ll say: In the hands of the clock is a mighty broom: Of the plumes of angels' wings are its bristles made. When time beats the past to dust, It’s all soon wafted to heaven As the clock each day fields its fabled broom. Out of that dust, as at the beginning of time, The Lord ever forms new worlds and fortunes In which by his grace Things now lost and missed may yet be reborn— But only to those that stand with the angels.