ParaDieu

ParaDieu

Time floods my consciousness
with pretense of reality that like a mist
is faithless, vanishing,
exchanging slavery with me.
That which I know, I am;
that which I see is merely me,
an object over there, apart
from unity.

Yet all is one. Subject, I am
and which I am, is not.
And was it not a God we heard
to claim to be? I like it not
to be a God within,
without a trinity
I cannot fathom--one
I surely cannot know.
Empty, therefore,
may it ever be
that I am not?
~

From a Christian in Exile

From a Christian in Exile

Do not think me cold of heart
if I decline to kneel before your God.
For I may pass within my mind,
into another room
and find its walls have given way
to vastness such, that if a man
before a throne were there, then he
would draw his hands before his eyes
in order not to see--my ecstasy
is by default...the rooms,
the rooms give plunder to the heart.

There are mansions in my father's house,
and still undreamed,
prepared by still another Lord
who will not wait for death,
imparts no benediction, just a place within
where time will drift away, and love creeps in.

The Savior knew about the lonely place
--led us there in life, and not by dieing;
(There were crosses quite enough
to teach us all of sacrifice) our salvation
trumpet sounded on a silent shore
before a stranger kingdom
than the one we knew,
before the outrage of a second birth,
before the blazing tumult
of a Galilean peace.
~

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

The breaths of sighing are time travelers
that draw one hundred fifty years up close
and reify old ghosts who will not sleep
between the pages of a history that they created.
Setting self aside,they died
with only slight regret, aware
that they would never see the end, yet knew
the glory of the OED* in birth.

Look back at them, who saw ahead to us
and breathe your sighs in concert, for you are
fulfillment of their dream to prowl the earth
beyond the breadth of England, or the sea,
to hold a candle high above the page
of humankind that speaks from every age.
~
*The Oxford English Dictionary