The Impossible

What am I to do with a God like you?
All day I beat myself
Against the rock of your improbable truth
Battered to despair;
Then you touch me
(It doesn’t matter: sunbeam, butterfly,
The soft new leaves of Spring)
And I am broken once again
By the tenderness that comes and carries me.

Both law and gospel
Scour me out precisely with the curette’s blade
Till I am nothing
A hollow thing
Deflated.
And then, oh wild wind of the Spirit,
Sun, moon and stars,
Music defying gravity,
Love, yourself, bursting through creation,
Entering my emptiness
Overturning death,
Scattering my altars till my heart laughs with you.

There is no walking with you
I must learn to dance,

Where angels fear to tread.