who
is this that
darkeneth counsel
by words
without
knowledge—
who regards
the aged leaves
to search
some signage of the stars?
who are they
that stalk
the shadowed field,
lantern wanderers
scouring the earth
for half-buried letters
and inscrutable shards
who trace
a silent pilgrimage
to a receding shore—
who believe
in vain perhaps
that reaching the sands
they hold the ocean
that spying the horizon
they rim the world.
for who
can fathom
the depths,
veiled
and swathed
in unapproachable light
stirring,
ebbing
in a stillness
out of uncreated time—
in which
the mind
sinks
like a cathedral
whose windows
dissolve into light
whose walls
disintegrate into water,
whose weight
dissipates in the waves—
where it floats
suspended,
rising and
falling
knowing
and unknowing
in the grace
of God.
—
Daniel Shin ’22 is a freshman in Wigglesworth.