Their eyes are quiet waters; they move, speak

In interdeference, pressureless, unloud,

Unstirred by urgencies, soul-soldered a crowd

Only by head-count; for contestation weak

Counter to engines, energies that wreak

A city’s ruin might raised, raised too world’s proud

Appurtneance might haunts with mushroom cloud:

Against force forceless, whisper combating shriek.

She said, Our Christmas vigil is for adoring

Christ in the Sacrament…I saw outpouring

Resources from life’s wellspring, power’s being;

Levers undamming omnipotence, restoring

To mercy extravagance, need avidity, freeing

Divinity from trammels of our seeing.

William Philbin