Nothingness is too simple (i was running up
the mountain before it got dark. a storm was
moving in, almost imperceptible—the subtle
changes. wind speed, cloud cover, humidity.
The landscape sunken, thirsting for rain)
only a crazy sort of nothingness could flip into something;
cannot nothing be known from nothing?
Even the demons believe [1]
we are light begotten
that we’re of earthy stuff
from the choked riverbeds
sprung rusty sheets of canyon—
bed of an ancient sea
and life forms long extinct
that hydrogen burns and
becomes iron, fused in the stars
There was a moment
that before which there wasn’t. (was it
the binoculars in my backpack
that made the trek so long? every
step so thick and quivering)
Sometimes when i am(when substance is empty,
is it wanting to be)looking at the mountains,
all i see is the slow pilgrimage of the sun.
Audience sits transfixed—a dead giraffe
splayed on the operating table still
draining wine red onto concrete and white gloves.
Corrugated purple trachea like a pedaled pipe of an organ,
eyes glazed, fixed upside-down, chin removed
human kind cannot bear very much reality [2]
“What did I tell you,” chuckle spread from ear to ear [3]
“the pointlessness of such a creature” (nearing the top,
snow began fluttering—whose voice was it that
whispered on our climb)
“isn’t it great? There is no Engineer;
here lies an accidental member of our clade.”
We laugh having never heard laughter,
cry before knowing what it is
to have heard the difference
between a robin and a thrush
Here is no water but only rock [4]
What mindless joy we flaunt at
death; we are but creations of some
idiotic tinker
why should we
mean anything at all?
neither man nor woman—
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls [5]
it’s funny that we only perceive life as being separate in death.
blood is our mortal ink, so familiar in feeling
the way our stories are written in it
and yet so strange
it was when Salome kissed the head of Jochanaan [6]
—yet in the theater we sat unmoving, seduced
In a fool’s world we are skittering sandpipers
between the margins of the tide.
We creep like ghost crabs along some dusky shore—
drawn by black unyielding waves on our left.
Sometimes they wash us out to sea,
rip current into immeasurable abyss;
other times ocean gifts are deposited
in a trail by the skim
as we are left to the ospreys.
a moth does not know its tongue replicates the orchid.
the arctic tern cannot say why it circumnavigates the poles.
how do we know that we know
something apart from nothing (the
summit at last! oxygen is so thin up here, i think, as
i take in the wash of phthalo blue, yellow ochre,
alizarin crimson—wondering if i’ll see a green flash
before the sun melts over the hazy Pacific.)
To look upon the lead white canvas
is to look through a deep clear pool.
Its glistening surface appears floating above and
as some extension of empty space below.
How can I know what I know
when we knew that nothing
was all that we had ever known
that we’ve no less days
Than when we first begun [7]
Author Notes on the Poem:
In Dante’s Inferno, some of the great human philosophers who were alive before the time of Jesus were placed together in an oddly beautiful part of hell—the first circle of hell, known as Limbo. Dante describes human reason as creating a beautiful light of its own, while still understanding that it is far inferior to the light of paradise.[8] In a similar way, there is much beauty in the natural world that is made even more beautiful in the lens of creation.
So it struck me how many people revel in their nonbelief. I was sitting in a biology class two years ago when we watched a filmed giraffe dissection conducted by staunch atheist Richard Dawkins. He pointed to the strangely shaped laryngeal nerve—which extends from the brain all the way down to the heart and back up the neck—as proof that there is no great engineer, no God.[8] The way he said it with such cold joy unnerved me.
One of the most significant works of modern classical music is sometimes considered to be Richard Strauss’ “Salome,” which ends on the disturbing scene of Salome giving in to greed and kissing the severed head of John the Baptist.[9] Much like the dissection, this image stuck with me and made me think about how grounding it is to have the reassurance of God’s love, even through all sorts of turmoil.
This poem is about coming to faith amidst a world riddled with doubt. The wall our culture has drawn between scientific discovery and faith has created a false dichotomy of educated atheists and untrained Christians. Time and time again, science and religion are pitted against each other as enemies—all to say that human reason could never lead to the existence of God. And yet, there is so much beauty in overlooked things: the intricate woodland song of the thrush or the way a giant sphinx moth’s tongue is uniquely adapted to the orchid; but these things are so often only seen this way by those seeking God. Our society has been inured to nihilism. We think that because we started as nothing, we mean nothing. A great mystery of both science and our faith, however, tells us that there was a point before which there was nothing; and, after this point, we can no longer be nothing.
By Guy Grisham, Contributor
Guy Grisham is a senior from Bethesda, Maryland studying violin performance and chemistry. Guy is an avid birdwatcher, hiker, and spice enthusiast. He enjoys writing poetry and pieces about faith amidst uncertainty.
Sources
1. James 2:14-26, ESV
2. Eliot, T. S. “Burnt Norton,” in Four Quartets. Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1943.
3. Eliot, T. S. “The Waste Land.” New York: Horace Liveright, 1922.
4. Ibid.
5. Poe, Edgar A. “The Bells,” 1849.
6. Strauss, Richard. “Ich Habe Deinen Mund Geküsst,” in Salome, op. 54, 1891.
7. Newton, John. “Amazing Grace,” 1772.
8. Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Translated by John Ciardi. New York: New American Library, (orig. c. 1310) 1971.
9. Strauss, Richard. Salome, op. 54, 1891.
