! John Of Forde, His Exculpation Poem by Michael Shepherd

What I say and what I write
may seem to you – may seem to me –
as foolishness and folly; for
I talk of boundless things, and of infinity;

which by their nature, are beyond
the human mind, the human pen;
should I then not and never speak of such?

Or are these boundless things
just what mankind should talk about –
seeking the laws of atoms, or of space, only
to find the boundlessness yet further off
than men of yesteryear believed?

and if I talk and write – beside those things
invisible as once the surface of the Moon –
then, of the boundlessness of love - which is yet bound
into Creation’s very substance – and
those other boundless things which seem to us
to be Creation's - even the Creator’s - very nature…

then my exculpation is but simply this:
the motive force for what I write,
the theme of what I write, which is
my boundless love for you, for all,
demands, must win, forgiveness
from Boundlessness itself…

there is no more, there is no less
than love, which is true boundlessness.



[adapted from Sermon 43 of John of Forde,1145-1214]