Oh, tell me, tell me, did you give too much
too soon, too suddenly beyond your will?
Did war, fatigue, and boredom’s wasting touch
empty your years before your years could fill?
Or did you find simplicity too soon,
all life revolved around a single point
as though the sun of hate should glare at noon
forever vertical in time’s disjoint?
Can you not rest now? Or do day on day
pile up their constant hours in demands
for payments heaped beyond the means to pay,
deeper than drifts, more infinite than sands?
Patience! Until the drifts of debt become
riches you cannot reckon up the sum.
—Christopher Lafarge, from Beauty for Ashes
This sonnet is part of a long novel, all in verse, and the non-capitalization of some of the initial words in the lines are the poet’s.
What do you think the last couplet means?
I think “drifts of debt become riches” means that at some point in life a person realizes that everything we get is a gift. Even when other people do things, sacrifice things “for” someone else, they are, or they should be, taking their pleasure from their deeds at the time. Do you really “owe” them? They have had their reward.
And God, or Fortune, whichever you prefer?
It reminds me of lines from one of my favorite hymns: “O, to Grace how great a debtor/Daily I’m constrained to be!” Beautiful lyrics! But: the idea of being indebted to grace is oxymoronic. Grace is by its nature, gratuitous. You cant earn it, or pay it back; if you could, it would be merely Justice.
So, the poet counsels patience in awaiting the inevitable epiphany when his interlocutor —the reader—realizes he doesn’t owe anything to anyone, or to fortune, that all the benisons he has received, and whatever good continues to befall him, is simply his portion in life. There’s no lien on any of it. Then he will be able to measure up his life’s treasure, then he can rejoice in his wealth.
But that’s just me. Why do you think?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
How beautiful! Thank you for this, Hypatia. I kind of take the last couplet as encouragement to persevere. It sounds to me like the words are being addressed to someone who is drowning in debt, and the writer is saying, “Hang in there! One day all this debt will turn into riches.”
It makes me think of Heaven, because unfortunately, that is the only place where most of us will have our debts wiped out, and riches bestowed on us whose sum we cannot reckon, although, he isn’t really talking about money, is he? Regardless, this poem seems very spiritual to me, and it seems like he is referring to the afterlife. But maybe that is just me being biased 🙂
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Gorgeous! Maybe “The Simon Tao” (“heart open, present always, toward the other”) is one piece of the puzzle?
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