No Words

 

     Somewhere a child is so young that he looks

at the world for the first time, a real look. He

kneels up at the windows in his draggled white

sleepers in the comfortable moisture of his own

urine. With no words, he looks at the world in its

fullness. He sees the wall, for how weak it is; he

sees the atmosphere in spite of its transparency;

the sky towers; the clouds lead his wide, sober eyes

up the very place of God. The child puts his

finger in his mouth and contemplates: in his small

head is the whirling of planetary systems and the

acceptance that a million million miles lie between

him and that part of himself he may someday call

"God." Seeing a larger tear start, God lets the sober eyes

travel back to the closer clouds, down from infinity

to the garden, and to a little bug walking across

the sill.

 

       Now the child too has the illusion that the

walls are strong, that the world is small, and that

mystery is enclosed in a little bug he can hold in

his own two hands. He has many questions still,

almost too many for his head to hold, but no words.

 

       When he gets words, he will have fewer questions,

and then perhaps for years at a time, he will have no

questions at all.