Answer

I pray for peace as wars run into years.
There is a kingdom somehow drawing near
where nothing dies, not even a leaf falls
except as medicine. There are no palls
for there are never funerals, never grief.
Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief—

Are those my lips that say it, and my mouth?
Go through the motions—it’s not even doubt;
it’s nothing, empty as the words I say
and mean—and know the wind will blow away.
A moment, and the words and I are gone.
What will remain? What grace will carry on?

The terrible, the unrelenting thirst
for brother’s blood we spill as at the first—
but even this is swallowed in the vast
unfathomable peace that comes at last.
I cannot grasp it, cannot comprehend
the ocean without shoreline, without end.

It has no hunger, neither has it need;
it swallows all, and yet it does not feed.
It takes our death, and then the dead thing lives.
The Lord taketh away—but, too, he gives
who knows the roots of death, makes them his own
and lies there silent as the unmoved stone.

This silence lets me speak words that confound.
This, then, is faith: I let myself be bound
by words that go unanswered. This is hope:
That there beyond the confines of my scope
the answer lies, with him, devouring death.
When this is finished, he will give it breath.

Letipea hiidrahn (glacial erratic) in Estonia By Zosma - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10887879