CREATURES

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), “The Last Supper” (detail)
Pinacoteca di Brera
Courtesy Catholic Truth Society

Another discourse? Living bread?
We see His face, we hear the words
But make no more of what He says
Than thunder bursts or singing birds

Bread is bread but not a man
So how can He be food and drink?
Wheat is grass and grass is land—
My Lord, how hard it is to think

Who’s the Father He must please,
Father rage or Father love?
Shadows pass beneath the trees,
Ominous the mourning doves

A brazen serpent held aloft
Is God the Son, the bread of life;
At close of day the wind is soft,
But death is sharper than a knife

Now we listen, we are drawn
As flowers open to the sun;
Night is followed by the dawn
But to the death who’ll follow? Some.

Speak again, we are afraid,
This little life is precious, rare;
We the creatures You have made
Will shake our heads, and dumbly stare