As pure unalloyed reason strives,
divines the depths of "to be" -
so pure unalloyed love replies,
"Lord - nothing, none but thee".

Aid us in the moments we fail to see your face,
When we turn inside ourselves and tire of the race.
Convert our gaze toward the cross that we begin to see,
True pain, true hope, true love, true life - at death and now with thee.

Perhaps that’s why your friends oft found their place alone,
On silent hills and mountains wandered - yet they called it home.
Their emptiness filled with that grace which makes our stiff hearts learn:
The cross leads us outside ourselves - when t’wards it we turn.

What joke is this which heav’n sees fit to play?
From iron sword at night which brought rebuke,
a virtue - courage - stoked too far was sheathed.
But yet at flame the coward rose foretold?

Can help his look but linger in the soul?

How deep it stings: the sin, the fault, the fear
with which Sophia hath become my Eve,
yet brings with her no respite from the ache
when touched:
                            a sign divine which ought give hope.

Now hope concedes to pain and guilted sighs.
In darkness and the chaos of this night,
He mocks with heinous cries, “END IT! END IT!”

A slight hurt smile, the fool has gone too far,
and called to mind some phrase which love once spoke.

So I with John leave naked from the scene,
stripped bare of key and promises once giv’n.
Tiberias shall greet a worm for fish,
a maggot born to feed the dust. And yet
with soft resolve, “I will be, I will be.”