Love's Body

Lean in! I was a child, and spoke like one;
        My thought? very like a child’s.
                I gripped my reason with both
my little fists. It smelled suspiciously of milk.
        Now, as a man, I’ve learned to let it go.
                Just now, we squint to see the Image through
this latent, bleak obscurity. One day, we’ll see the Image—
        as Himself—gleaming from each face.
                Just now, I puzzle through a range
of incoherencies; but on that day,
        the scattered fragments will cohere.
                In all of this, both now and ever,
faith and hope and love abide, these
        sacred three, but the greatest of these (you surely
                must have guessed) is love.


-- Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian, reconceiving 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 by St. Paul the Apostle