Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen, 1925
Countee Cullen's sonnet on the riddles of a God who is good yet allows suffering, from the blind mole to Tantalus and Sisyphus.
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,And did He stoop to quibble could tell whyThe little buried mole continues blind,Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,Make plain the reason tortured TantalusIs baited by the fickle fruit, declareIf merely brute caprice dooms SisyphusTo struggle up a never-ending stair.Inscrutable His ways are, and immuneTo catechism by a mind too strewnWith petty cares to slightly understandWhat awful brain compels His awful hand.Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:To make a poet black, and bid him sing!