And I Would Not

Come to the table
and I will serve you
all you’ve asked for:
look, it all awaits

on formal china
with proper silver
set beside the plates
in proper order,
all laid out upon
the best linen,
spotless
and soft.

I promise this to you
in the name of propriety
and all I have tried to do
to explain my faults away,
at which I have failed
in spite of decades of 
effort. 

You tell me 
I should have just tried harder
to not have the faults
in the first place
and we would have been fine
eating little but bread 
with our fingers and cheap wine
from old jelly jars
while seated upon stones
in a ragged ring around a fire.

I look at this table,
think of all
I’ve spent upon it.

I look up at the vaults of heaven.

I am not at all sure
I’d be the same person today
if I had done what you asked.

Perhaps that is your point:

if I’d been welcome
in the house of your God
all along I would have been

a different man;
you would be here,
and I would not.