This poem is taken from PN Review 250, Volume 46 Number 2, November - December 2019.
True Vine
My God, how I these studies prize,
That do thy hidden workings show!
Whose sum is such
No sum so much:
Nay, summed as sand they sumless grow.
I lie to sleep, from sleep I rise,
Yet still in thought with thee I go.
— Mary Sidney Herbert, ‘Psalm 139’
‘One should never go to God, as it were “on purpose”’
— Leo Tolstoy, ‘Thoughts on God’ (1900), trans. Vladimir Tchertkoff
1. VINE
The infinite is intricate, a vine
That wanders and rewinds,
An inexplicable design,
One of those marvellous finds
That never disappoint, degenerate,
Or fail to satisfy the mind’s
Demand for narratives commensurate
...
That do thy hidden workings show!
Whose sum is such
No sum so much:
Nay, summed as sand they sumless grow.
I lie to sleep, from sleep I rise,
Yet still in thought with thee I go.
— Mary Sidney Herbert, ‘Psalm 139’
‘One should never go to God, as it were “on purpose”’
— Leo Tolstoy, ‘Thoughts on God’ (1900), trans. Vladimir Tchertkoff
1. VINE
The infinite is intricate, a vine
That wanders and rewinds,
An inexplicable design,
One of those marvellous finds
That never disappoint, degenerate,
Or fail to satisfy the mind’s
Demand for narratives commensurate
...
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