Who am I, O Life, that You should descend unto my death? Who am I, O Assuming One? Who, in the foul chambers of my heart, where life had gone dumb with stench, and breath no longer answered breath, where despair smothered like a grave-shroud— was received into the Heart Of Deity. Who am I, O Living Mystery? For, yea, I was not wounded nor wandering— I was dead— mute to Your nearness, deaf to Your song. Yet You entered me. Who am I, O New Creation? For, I was scribbling in the rot and dust of death, grasping for my forgotten name. My hands were black, and my form dry and cracked, crooked and bent. And yet You bent down into the grave with me, and in Your bending I became unbent. You clothed Yourself in my deadness and made it Your will. You assumed my disease into Your bones, my night into Your dawn, my end, Your revealing. And You did not return to me my old name, O Master— You remembered me Yours. O Crucified One, You carried me through Your passion, sewn to Your breast, and there my deadness met Your death so that death might die. O Living Genius, Mind of God, who could sound Your depths or trace the Diagram of Love? Who am I, O Resurrection? For You did not rise without me. In Your dying my death died; for the hell I had entered and barred shut from Your entrance became the very gate of paradise itself. For when I descended into hell, You art there; in the valley of death, You are there. Where could I go from such mercy, O All in the All? In what point on the map are You not? What place is not filled with He who fills all things with glory? What single solitary soul are You not now, even in this very moment, sustaining within Yourself? What step could I take that is not already paved in you? What words could I utter, or song sing, that is not already Your ever-present melody sung over me, O Song of Songs? For, where could hiddenness hide within Love that enters the grave and makes it the very gates of paradise itself? Who am I, O Bright Morning Star, for now I wake within the dawn, the morning of Your life. And set before me is Divinity’s Cup— and I do eat, drink, and am drunk on Love eternal. Who am I, O Eternal Feast, that I am commanded to eat God with cheer? My eyes squint from Uncreated Light too heavy for sobriety. They water and narrow; and in their flickering I see: The Diagram of Love comes to me faster than sense can withhold. O Satiating Cup, I stagger in fullness, in fatness. I wobble in delights, a spectacle, laughing out of tune with death. Let all stare. It matters not— Ecstasy Himself has seized me. For who am I, O Fruit of Eden, dripping with divine sugar, that I am made to taste Thee as nectar? O Milk and Honey of promise— I am undone and remade in Thine own sweetness.
