The Answer

(The Empty Tomb by George Richardson)

Not darkness but twilight

In which even the best

of minds must make its way

now. And slowly the questions

occur, vague but formidable

for all that. We pass our hands

over their surface like blind

men feeling for the mechanism

that will swing them aside. They

yield, but only to re-form

as new problems; and one

does not even do that

but towers immovable

before us.

                   Is there no way

of other thought of answering

its challenge? There is an anticipation

of it to the point of

dying. There have been times

when, after long on my knees

in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled

from my mind, and I have looked

in and seen the old questions lie

folded and in a place

by themselves, like the piled

graveclothes of love’s risen body.

~R. S. Thomas