When He Wants to Be Clear, He’s Clear

by Stephen Kampa

a theologian on God

Immediately, I think of mysteries.
Hard sayings. Prayers that pittered in the void.
Translation flubs. Lost phrases. Paranoid
Yarn-links from headlines to old prophecies.

The word ones aren’t the worst opacities:
Blights, stillbirths, strokes, disease’s teratoid
Disfigurements, whole villages destroyed
By droughts or floods—these aren’t anomalies,

We needed names for them, a lexicon
Of misery, a grammar of the grim
Through which our sharpest sentences are drawn

To one conclusion: God’s a synonym
For suffering. The ancient archons yawn
As God grows clear: we see the world through him.

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Stephen Kampa is the author of three collections of poems: Articulate as Rain, Bachelor Pad, and Cracks in the Invisible. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2018.