The Casualty by R.S. Thomas

 I had forgotten
 the old quest for truth
 I was here for Other cares
 
 held me: urgencies
 of the body; a girl
 beckoned; money
 
 had never appeared
 so ethereal; it was God's blood
 circulating in the veins
 
 of creation; I partook
 of it like Communion, lost
 myself on my way
 
 home, with the varying voices
 on call. Moving backward
 into a receding
 
 future, I lost the use
 of perspective, borrowing poetry
 to buy my children
 
 their purpose. The past was a poor
 king, rendering his crown down
 for the historian. Every day
 
 I went on with that
 metallic warfare in which
 the one casualty is love.
 
 
  by R. S. Thomas
 from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)