Saturday, June 02, 2007

This will displease doubters ...

... and many as well who claim to believe, for it is what faith often looks like from inside: Jojhn Berryman's Eleven Addresses to the Lord. (Hat tip, Joe of New York.)

Interminable: an old theologian
asserts that even to say You exist is misleading.
Uh-huh. I buy that Second-century fellow.
I press his withered glorifying hand.

You certainly do not as I exist,
impersonating as well the meteorite
& flaring in your sun your waterfall
or blind in caves pallid fishes.

Scoffers, I know, will point out that one January morning, not so long after these lines were written, Berryman leaped from a bridge onto a frozen riverbank (I visited the spot once, for I was deeply moved by his passing, being at the time, as he was, a drunk). But I suspect he thought that God had led him there - and jumped with him.

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