Now, can you see—
And where, I ask, does reason keep her place?
Yet weep never more, for here such bounds are gone,
Imagination breaks the rigid space
Where fact and faith have stood as foes too long.
The skies above us sway as once they did,
O’er Nazareth, when morning’s light was new,
When humbled Magi came with gifts well hid
For Him, the child, whose burden few yet knew.
Too young to grasp the weight of sacrifice,
Too small to raise dissent or understand,
For voices of the weak, like fish’s cries,
Fall soft as prayers that slip through careless hands.
Thus Yahweh shaped us frail, in fear confined,
And so His soldiers found us mute, resigned.
We move like shadows, bound yet free in name,
Our choices hollow, tethered to the past.
Through Heaven’s pale blue screen, we trace the same
Old shapes, each generation as the last.
With sullied hands, the sacred lines we tread,
New Calvaries we raise above the land,
Where ancient sorrows whisper for the dead,
And grief’s eternal cross shall ever stand.
Above the roofs and nests of fleeting peace,
We build again the thorny crown, the pain,
And time, unkind, denies us sweet release—
The stars look down, unchanging, to disdain.
If time could turn, undo the stars’ first flame,
What quiet sky might rest, unmarked by shame?
December 2024