O restless soul that kneels before the altar and the void alike,
what god dost thou beseech when thunder roars across the marbled sky:
the god of certainties, who parts the seas and names the stars by light,
or that more silent deity who offers neither balm nor alibi?
Are we not but candles flickering in the sphere of endless night,
our wax the years, the flame the desperate will to ask of darkness why?

And still we burn, though every breath reminds us we were made to die,
for faith is not the absence of a question but its sharpened spike
on which we hang our hope-filled flags, still wet, still glistening, still bright,
while somewhere past the mystery veil of what we know, beyond the mortal sigh,
there waits perhaps a country without flags, perhaps a dreamless sleep,
perhaps a void greater than the endless sky, cold and infinite and deep.

And we, who loved and raged and wept beneath the careless wheel of time,
who built cathedrals out of doubt and sang our prayers through storms,
who sought the face of God in every wound and every gift bestowed,
must walk unto that lonesome threshold with no candle but the human form,
no certainty save this: that we have brightly burned, and burning was enough
to make the darkness tremble at a light so fragile, so unique and so free.

Inspired by Lord Byron

 

8/2/2026