Читать книгу Ordinary Time - Michael D. Riley - Страница 8

Because of the absurdity of a very young girl

believing herself visited by an angel of God

Because of the absurdity of that same young girl

believing herself the virgin bride

of the God of the universe

of sound and silence

Because of the absurdity of a very old woman

believing she too could still bear a child

Because of the absurdity of these same two women

believing that in their contiguous wombs,

contiguous extremes of age and experience

together in the same house,

lay caller and called,

metanoia itself

Because of the absurdity of one good man

believing a dream that tells him

his pregnant young wife is a virgin still

and more than faithful

Because of the absurdity of anyone at any time

believing the most important birth in history

took place in the darkest backwater of empire

among dung, cold, and incurious beasts

Because of the absurdity of being expected

to believe in a Godman

who is perfectly God

and completely man

Because of the absurdity of believing

that the symbol is in fact, fact,

the reality it pretends to stand in for

in order to then stand aside

Because of the absurdity of a life proceeding

belief by belief in a world which believes

a mask is only a mask

Because of the absurdity of dead and living

billions believing life is won by loss,

love won by suffering, nothing won

at all because all is given

Because of the absurdity of coming to

believe in love as the grass believes in green,

silver slashes of light believe in the moon

and shadow, brown moods and disappearance

when the grass forgets itself in snow

Because of the absurdity of believing

believing is a grace written on a metaphoric heart

no one will ever see, reenacted

by a mind/brain as impossible

to believe in as the soul

Because absurdity is love believing

in belief itself, “evidence” of things not seen

to energize the crossed paradox

consciousness cooperates to raise

upon a hill no one can find

outside an ahistorical story

Because of the absurdity of believing

God’s mind opened like a tomb,

pried dead flesh up as with a spoon

and threaded bones together in the air

Because absurdity must sing itself to sleep

in belief, for nothing else will do,

will ever do, and nothing

will never do, so the jest

of thinking confesses yet again

“Blessed are you who believed

that what was spoken to you by the Lord

would be fulfilled”

said the very old to the very young,

so we are told. And tell.