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