Truth is truth wherever it is found,
In light-struck windowed hands of opal glass,
In pebbles left in homage on a grave,
In fingers shelling mounds of lady peas,
In radiance that roosts inside the soul,
In paint, in words, in whirling steps, in steel,
In “rings of fire” as infant heads are crowned,
In my, in your last breath the day we pass,
In clerestory beams that pierce a nave,
In water-gilding’s gold, in mystic keys,
In fire’s vermilion in the glory hole,
In fish that gasp at air inside a creel.
In harrowed earth, in streams, in adze and wood
A beauty lives: ignored, misunderstood.
—Marly Youmans
Goodbye, Childless Elites
The U.S. birthrate has declined to record lows in recent years, well below population replacement rates. So…
Postliberalism and Theology
After my musings about postliberalism went to the press last month (“What Does “Postliberalism” Mean?”, January 2026),…
In the Footsteps of Aeneas
Gian Lorenzo Bernini had only just turned twenty when he finished his sculpture of Aeneas, the mythical…