On A Theme By Thomas Merton

"Adam, where are you?"

          God's hands

palpate darkness, the void

that is Adam's inattention,

his confused attention to everything,

impassioned by multiplicity, his despair.

Multiplicity, his despair;

          God's hands

enacting blindness. Like a child

at a barbaric fairgrounds —

noise, lights, the violent odors —

Adam fragments himself. The whirling rides!

Fragmented Adam stares.

          God's hands

unseen, the whirling rides

dazzle, the lights blind him. Fragmented,

he is not present to himself. God

suffers the void that is his absence.