In 1931, he walked with Tolkien one night
And finally surrendered on the morrow
And now, seven decades later,
He's still teaching me
To lay down my own sword
He was hounded by sorrow
It caught his scent when he was nine
And he saw the total disfigurement
That lay upon his mother's corpse
It chased him through school
Where it met with the goddess Nonsense
They chased him through his classes
In his nightly prayers they hunted him
Until they chased him from the Church
And he sighed with relief
He set up a signpost before his soul
That "this is my own"
And wandered the dark lands
He put on the chains of modernity
And sat upon the hills of snobbery
He played the games of the world
He ate the feasts of the flesh
And even paused to watch
The very spectacles of Hell
But the fiends were not alone
And there were others on his heels
Together, Joy and Reason laid their traps
One day, Joy whisked him off
Off to Northern lands
For one brief taste
Of that sweet ache
In the lands of the Enemy
She swept through like a ghost
And one by one she unmasked each fiend
Teaching the boy at each turn
That the supreme bribe was not there
And beside her was Reason
Clad all in armor
She led him through the pages
Of Plato and of Chesterton
As Joy called him to Phantastes
She cut down his chronological snobbery
And whispered things he dared not to hear
They chased him for years and years
Until the armor was unbuckled
Until each threshold was passed
And he took the sign down
And made his surrender
But that was only the beginning
For then the Irishman took up a new sword
He revisited his old sorrows in The Problem of Pain
He raised up the ghost of years past
Still clinging to its signpost
And made war upon it
He wrote of the Tao
Of Nature and Supernature
Of a Man who was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or a Lord
He wrote of doctrine and arguments and joy
He stabbed at his infected soul and let the pus seep out
Out with it spilled a zoo of lusts
A bedlam of ambitions
A nursery of fears
A harem of fondled hatreds
He cornered them all
Like rats in an attic
And extracted a name from each
And out of that toil came an infernal tale
Which left him tired and aching in his spirit
Called The Screwtape Letters
He remembered the holiness of Fairy Land
And set to chronicle the wonders
Of a whimsical God
In the far-off land of Narnia
He shared his pilgrimage
His struggles
His delights
His fascinations
And before he was called Home
He let us observe his grief
And now I sit here
With his books on my shelves
An introverted storyteller
An evil sinner in need of a savior
Who looks across the decades
Seeing one who knows my heart
And all the wickedness therein
Someone like a teacher
Or an uncle
Or a fellow comrade
So thank you, Mr. Lewis
I don't know the untravelled paths
The world without you is unknown to me
But I know that I never yearned for humility
Until you told me about the really humble man
I know that you made me doubt
My own chronological snobbery
I know there is something in me
However great or small
That would be gone
If I had never heard your name
So I give my thanks
To the Chronicler
To N.W. Clerk
To Jack the Giantkiller
To C.S. Lewis
And to the One who raised him up
And likewise raised so many heroes
Through all the ages
