From "The Unauthorized Fragments"

           The pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling
             of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from
             the religiosity of someone more naive.
                           Albert Einstein

Even my sleep is a desert drawn against black walls
that have little to do with triangles and π, or the slaughter
of pigeons that fall like clay from flying buttresses.

Something about not having you here reminds me
of the time I hoped for pain to leave awhile
and return with less of itself and more of a sight not seen.
I'm hoping that all the spaces not yet made
will have the chance to think,

to carry in their lawnchairs, to sit for a while
in the growing forgetfulness of each evening. On the horizon
where darkness descends into its perpetual shifting of light
like a dilemma we haven't quite solved, there may be something

about the God we keep coming back to, keep raising for ourselves
in moments of need, and keep talking to as if we want more
than anything to humble ourselves, at least for now—
to what we call prayer and tone of pleading

that even our necks will be slacked by so much
begging. There, inside the enormity of space, the dimension
of our own wailings to this God—who turns
a deaf ear to our silliness—forgets for us

how the crime of pacifists is an acute grandeur, a lesson
that all this leftover devotion wandering on the steps
of our cathedrals is not what will cure the violence, our faith
is so thinly hunkered inside so brittle a husk.

Copyright © 2002 Robert E. Haynes All rights reserved
from The Grand Unified Theory
Paladin Contemporaries
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission