"Here on these waters a man walked."
"So it is written—yes, I know."
"Though it wasn't, of course, sunlit as now. There was wind howling, and great dark troughs between towering walls glossy as glass. No wonder those others were sore afraid! Caught, as they were, in a little boat—and perhaps, who knows, right over there, where that motor launch is towing the girl on skis .... Crouched low, they'd be pulling on their creaking oars, when he, this man, came walking out—"
"Just like that? On his own two feet?"
"Well, how else? What other meaning could 'walking' have?"
"And wearing sandals? Wearing his robe?"
"Wearing—? I hadn't thought of that. But what would it matter, either way? Something happened. And not by a fluke! Not as some species of holy trick, irrationally performed to reassure a few—"
"You're remembering, aren't you, that
I know this tale?"
"Ah, but it isn't—"
"Isn't a tale? Then choose whatever word you prefer. Tradition? Legend? Doctrinal mystique? After all, we too have the same sort of thing! We, like you, in order to sustain that part of a man insufficiently nourished by the realities of life—"
"But that's precisely what I believe it was! A reality of life! Breaking through. And because it did, right here on this lake—"
"Oh, come—hold on! Let's not spoil what we've so far shared! A sea, yes. A storm, to be sure. And then, like so much else that was shaped out of those early imprecisions of mist .... Really, you're far too intelligent, I think, to give your consent to more than this!"
Far too intelligent? To give consent?
O Lord, on this shining, antique shore
beneath these hills you moved among
I would believe (where belief comes hard) that it all
took place quite simply as told:
that here one man—
supremely endowed to enact what is true,
in strict conformity to an absolute law—
walked on water. And so proved
a dominion that still awaits our yield
to what he knew.
