Carl Dennis won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and judging from the following poem, it is not hard to see why. <\/p>\n
The God Who Loves You<\/u>
\nCarl Dennis<\/i><\/p>\n
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
\nTo ponder how much happier you’d be today
\nHad you been able to glimpse your many futures.
\nIt must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
\nDriving home from the office, content with your week —
\nThree fine houses sold to deserving families —
\nKnowing as he does exactly what would have happened
\nHad you gone to your second choice for college,
\nKnowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
\nWhose ardent opinions on painting and music
\nWould have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
\nA life thirty points above the life you’re living
\nOn any scale of satisfaction. And every point
\nA thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
\nYou don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
\nWho tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
\nSo she can save her empathy for the children.
\nAnd would you want this god to compare your wife
\nWith the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
\nIt hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
\nYou’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
\nThan the conversation you’re used to.
\nAnd think how this loving god would feel
\nKnowing that the man next in line for your wife
\nWould have pleased her more than you ever will
\nEven on your best days, when you really try.
\nCan you sleep at night believing a god like that
\nIs pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
\nYou’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
\nAnd what could have been will remain alive for him
\nEven after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
\nRunning out in the snow for the morning paper,
\nLosing eleven years that the god who loves you
\nWill feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
\nUnless you come to the rescue by imagining him
\nNo wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
\nNo closer than the actual friend you made at college,
\nThe one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
\nAnd write him about the life you can talk about
\nWith a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
\nWhich for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.<\/p>\n
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