Marks and the Marked

The lines lifted out from their surroundings in the poem could be about cutting and self harm.

Your lacerations tell the losing game
You play against a sickness past your cure.

They are about a preacher's struggle and another type of damage:

What are we in the hands of the great God?
It was in vain you set up thorn and briar
In battle array against the fire
And treason crackling in your blood;
For the wild thorns grow tame
And will do nothing to oppose the flame;
Your lacerations tell the losing game
You play against a sickness past your cure.
How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?

Robert Lowell
"Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
The Kenyon Review, Winter 1946, Vol. VIII, No. 1

And so for day 2388
27.06.2013