He is a churchyard. In his grasses, crosses
Have blossomed once again, like quartered roses
That know the real crowns are made of thorns.
Redolent cedar, these, both kings and thrones
In one, and no, they aren’t marking graves.
Here is no fear and trembling. No one grieves.
No sickness unto death, no concept of
Anxiety. Just love, and works of love.
Beneath each cross a book lies open, seed
And sustenance and soil. When we sit
With one, we set off soaring, paragraphs
That carry us aloft, alight, like seraphs
Bearing us through the siren-harrowed air
To sing us closer to the hymn we are.
—Amit Majmudar
What We’ve Been Reading—Autumn 2025
First Things staff share their most recent autumn reading recommendations.
Walker Percy’s Pilgrimage
People can get used to most anything. Even the abyss may be rendered tolerable—or, for that matter,…
Outgrowing Nostalgia in The Ballad of Wallis Island
No man is an island,” John Donne declares in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The Ballad of…