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.