THE STRANGER

If God is willing to prevent evil but cannot, he is not omnipotent.  If able but not willing, he is malevolent.  If neither able nor willing to prevent evil then why call him God?
EPICURUS

GOD

Sitting alone on a broken wall
under a china-white sun
in La Chartreuse de la Verne,

I watch a nun duck beneath
a blue-green lintel (that mottled
stone unique to this region).

Her purpose sought within
the cool dark room beyond,
I watch unnoticed.  But

her long hard shadow
touches me like a black ray.
For a moment she denies me

the certainty of sunlight
and her God breathes once
within that heartbeat.

And then she’s gone and
the raw engine of the sun
turns the world again.

Later, in the barred
and spotted light of
ancient cloisters closed

round terraces of olive trees
hoarding crosses, a warm
ambiguous breeze turns over

leaves, raises dust,
transfigures heat into gold. 
But later yet, seated

at the border of God’s
promontory, where fallen
walls square shoulders

with the primal fixity
of uncut limestone, there
the fume of holy order

dissipates. Where cork
and chestnut trees grow wild
across the folds and pits

and fissures of this valley;
where base physics drains
the sap and salt flies in

the mistrale, there the snake
drops eggs, cool-white amongst
roots and butterflies

blow like embers. In the throat
of the lizard a pulse beats slow.
And through the distant veil

of plainsong barely heard,
the thermal voice of
original earth whispers,

wordless, unarticulated.  And
within it there is nothing
of praise or supplication, no

grammar of hope or expectation,
no syntax of desire. This is
the uninflected voice,

the broken consonants
of falling water, the endless
vowels of the wind.

...

Two excellent posts - Via Negativa & mole - occupying the same broad territory.