At Fourth and Walnut (for Thomas Merton)

He stopped dreaming
Of impossible solitude
And in the presence of his people—
Yes, his people, the filaments of an incandescent word,
the fibrous strands of his own soul—
He became friends with his God again for the first time.

What was he doing in the shopping district?
He was about his Father’s business!
What was his Father’s business?
Adoption! Matchmaking!

The Lord gave you brothers!
The Lord gave you sisters!
The Lord gave you lovers!
The Lord gave you, too, to the world.
You, not what is made by you.

You make telephones
You make computers
You make automobiles
You make medicine and mouthwash
You make cigarettes
You make high fructose corn syrup
You make complex financial instruments
You make intercontinental ballistic missiles
You make racism and reaction
You make religion and revolution
These are your gifts to the world.
Put them away, put them away.

What you are given to give, you do not give of yourself.
Being human is the gift not made by human hands.

In the crossroads, in the marketplace,
Something shines.
It can’t be sold. It isn’t gold.
It can hardly be seen
It can’t be won. It comes like sun
Like God
Into the world
Into the rooms of our consciousness
Penetrating walls
Coming silently
Leaving you alone
With you for the first time.

Did you know you come from the heart
Of an empty, pointed space? Do not fear:
Everything is found in this speck of nothingness,
Everything except war, hatred, cruelty, and greed.
Here there is poverty, but not want;
Dependence, but not slavery;
The word that speaks truth to power
Without the will to power.
Evil has no reality.

Here there is nothing left to do.
You don’t have to fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
Don’t paint crosses on your friends or targets on your enemies.
You don’t have to dress up, stop eating meat, give up sex and chocolate, or grow wings.
You don’t have to choose between illusions.

You are held by nothingness. You are the figure in the ground of ultimate reality.
Let go of everything: sin, desire, self-knowledge.
That tree in Eden was chopped down ages ago.
You belong without being bought.
You were found before you sought.

You will bless your home of flesh and blood.
You will revere the night spirit and the dawn air.
You will trust the desert.
You will stop when they scream for you to do something.
You will stop and praise all this useless beauty.

And your life will be a brilliant brilliance,
A Holy of Holies
In a temple not made by human hands,
Untouched by lies.

He tucked his arms into his robe.
He looked away and smiled with secrets
In his closing eyes.

When atoms split a thousand suns arise.
When atoms fuse a thousand thousands more will charge the skies.
Poets, physicists of the soul, show us the blinding image in God’s eyes.