THE WING'S SHADOW

You who assume I don't believe
whenever we two debate:
you can't imagine how I long,
I thirst, I hunger for God.

You've never heard
my desperate cries filling
the heart of darkness
with invocations of the Infinite.

You've never seen how my thought,
in its dedication to bearing
the ideal, regularly endures
the tortures of childbirth.

If my barren spirit
had your fertility,
it would've already forged a heaven
to make its world whole.

But I say: who knows
what effort would suffice
in a soul with no flag
to lead your torturer about,

a soul that lives by abstinence from faith,
and with heroic tenacity,
interrogates each abyss
and each night, asking why?

At all events, I take refuge
in my thirst for investigation,
my craving for God, deep and silent;
and there is more love in my doubt
than in your heated contention.