Manifold Mystery

What is the loveliness

You keep on your lips?

What scenes lay behind your closed eyes?

What do you ache for

In clenched finger-tips

What tunes your unspoken cries?

What draws your laughter?

What stirs your soul?

What weeps from inclines above?

What spawns the longing

That curses this world

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What causes Him

To grant one more day

To a thankless and erring race?

What shapes His patience

Toward rebel-slaves

Addicted to sin’s vile disgrace

What tunes the mercy

That wakens the dawn?

What stirs His might from above?

What fills the vastness

Of centuries gone?

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What forms desire?

Or then what fulfills it?

What is this double-edged sword?

What inflicts a wound?

But oh, then what heals it?

What is both race and reward?

What rends the heart

Like a lightning bolt

And yet is gentle as a dove?

What is this

Manifold mystery?

Oh, do you think it is love?

© Janet Martin