I've read many, many poems (and even written a few, somewhere...) and like Grishny I have a strong idea of what I like.

Only a couple of other times have I read a poem and found myself wanting to use the word beautiful where it would be justly and appropriately used.

This is one of those times.

Thoughts? The lack of capitalisation throughout most of the poem threw me at first but I picked up at the end that it seems to have been used to differentiate between yours and His words, and that's really worked well.

Reactions? My gut reaction was that it has religious overtones, but unlike some other poems I've come across, this one takes the most important part of that - the message, not the trappings, the rituals, the "stuff" around it all, it takes the underlying message and that means it loses some of the connotations it might have had, and I think that it makes it accessible to all - no matter what your faith or history are, there is something you can relate to in it.

Comments? It's really really good, and I'm sure it hurt to write. You've also done something it took me a whole lot more effort to do; you've explored an aspect of redemption, presumably in yourself, at least that's how it appears to me. I wrote a whole novel trying to understand it myself, but you have summed up fundamentally the same thing in a fraction of the wordage. It doesn't diminish the achievement in any way, if anything it heightens it.

Critiques? None.

Sorry to ramble on a bit but something of that calibre deserves at least a little attention lavished in return.

I am sorry also if I have come across as brash or insensitive; I do not know what motivated you to write that poem. I feel a sense of pain, the cause and subsequent redemption of it, was ultimately its source, but I could be wrong. It's dangerous to make such assumptions...