Onto the second half of my ‘Ages and Sins’ collection… the seven deadly sins. According to my research, there is a generally accepted order: pride (or vainglory), greed, or covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony (which also includes drunkenness), wrath or anger, and sloth. So I’ll write a love-related sonnet in response to each, in that order.
The sins are people putting their own interests before God. Gluttony, for example, is the love of food and drink about that of God. As a committed atheist, I don’t plan to dwell on this aspect of the sins for the whole collection. But I have deeded it necessary to do so in the first.
Pride
To love your strengths, they say, demeans their God:
Denies their hungry Lord the love he needs,
Clangs discord through that loyal, cloistered squad –
Frightened the Power might fade that on love feeds.
Love’s not a bottle stuck up on a shelf
Slow-emptied with each shot of spirit sunk:
It’s a wellspring set deep inside the self
That flows full fast despite how much is drunk.
Why would a God determine to deny
The air balloon that rises as it swells?
Unless that higher power hogs the sky
So he can look down on love-emptied shells.
If being proud of good things is a sin,
Then good’s not good, and there’s no God within.