Altar to the Unknown
Here is a granite plinth on which nothing
rests. And a riddle: to what nation does the baby
born mid-flight belong? She waves the flag
of nowhere like all these absent angels
waving their nowhere flags in the empty air
above this empty plinth, dedicated
to Agnostos Theos, the Unknown God,
which is to say, God. No-flag is the flag
of all the people who return to God, buried
in the thin skin of soil wrapped around
the unending earth. No-God is the God
of God-become-man, said Paul one day
to some Greeks. A citizen of the world,
he’d seen it plenty, how people make
their gods in the local image. Fitting, then,
that these people in the belly of civilization
would fashion a frame for emptiness,
that one might gaze into that nothing and be free:
the baby born nowhere belongs to every time zone,
holds every passport. The Unknown God
requires no ritual, wears only the clothing
of what world surrounds it. Jesus had
nothing to protect him but the fabric
some soldier pawned for pennies.
And on every penny: two faces if you know
just where to look. Tails, between the columns
of that solemn monument to something
undivided, a tiny visage prone to wearing
flat under the thumbs of all of us. To worship
before an emptiness, one must repent
both sides of the equation. That God
is knowable; that God is not already known.