The Source of Our Divinity

I see a child sitting by the road

As deafening mortars shatter nearby trees,

His body shaking as the bombs explode,

His matchstick arms clasped around his knees.

In the still hour when night begins to fold

Upon itself and half the world asleep,

When rain and flood and misery and cold

Through town and village, mind and body seep

I walk among the grieving things of earth

Aware that all the world is fraught with grief,

Of magic and mystery there is no dearth

And beauty shakes me like a falling leaf.

Peering through the looking-glass of mind

I watch my father young with energy

And boundless will who seeking could not find

In life's tableau the key to mastery.

Concealed against the facile outer view

The forces descending hide in their own light,

Upend our lives, our certainties undo,

Demand we see the world with keener sight

The realization locked within the cells

As we the finite of His infinity,

Are called as with a sound of temple bells

To find the source of our divinity.