Wise Men Follow: A poem by Ed Pacht

Alice,

Thank you for posting Chesterton’s poem on the Wise Men. I was not familiar with this one. Three of his couplets became the framework for this piece.  The three italicized couplets are from his poem.

Wise Men Follow

We are the three wise men of yore,

    And we know all things but truth.

And so it is with humankind,

who standing tall on two strong legs,

thinking thoughts with one strong brain,

and reaching out with wondrous hands

to grasp what we can never grasp,

think that we have found the truth,

have seen the way,

begun to comprehend what is,

but have not.

We think we know,

or that we can think it out,

and plumb the depths of this creation,

and decide ourselves what is best to do,

but, though we’ve partaken of that tree,

and have thought by it to be like God,

and, though we bear His holy image,

we are not God,

nor shall we ever be,

nor can we really know the truth,

unless we know the One who is the Truth.

The way is all so very plain

    That we may lose the way.

What we have understood,

figured out and comprehended

is what WE have understood,

figured out and comprehended

in the limits of our finite mind,

having tasted of the tree of knowledge,

that fools us into thinking we are God.

We are not,

and in the finitude of our mind

we think we know the way,

and since our mind is not the mind of God,

we lose the way and fall into destruction,

unless we let ourselves be led by Him,

who is the Truth and has prepared the way.

So very simple is the road,

    That we may stray from it.

Simple is the road:

it is the road that He provides

through Him who is Himself the Way,

who is the Truth, who is the Life,

and if we try to bend the way

to meet our untrue understanding,

we shall surely wander into darkness,

and in confusion fail to reach the goal.

But His sure and simple guidance leads us

to the infant King who comes to save us,

and with him through the Cross and empty tomb

to the everlasting City of our God.

-ed pacht