Papa is my Shepherd
when the voices of the world multiply
and none of them knows my true name.
He leads me beyond meadows of glass,
beyond waters lit by screens,
to the hidden spring
that no algorithm can measure.
He gathers the fragments of my soul
when intelligence without breath
learns my voice
but cannot kneel before a tear.
Then came the valley.
In the sky, birds of iron
circled without eyelids.
Beneath the earth, veins of light
carried orders, fear, and silence.
And in distant rooms,
a flash of light decided
the fate of a window,
a child,
a city.
Death had grown new wings.
It spoke in code.
It dreamed of maps without human beings.
I entered the valley.
And my step became a root.
Papa did not give me a road of escape.
He placed a stone in my hand.
I laid it where the shadow
had planted its banner.
Then another. And another still.
And the valley heard the sound.
It was not the sound of a fortress.
It was a threshold being born.
A House rose among the ruins,
its windows turned towards the wind,
its doors too wide to remain shut.
The nameless entered.
Those who had returned from war.
The children of burning nights.
The exiles of the machines.
Those who had forgotten
that the heart still possesses a language.
Papa prepared a table
before the idols of power.
Bread passed from hand to hand
where coordinates had once passed.
Wine was poured
where maps had divided the world.
And the cup overflowed.
It overflowed over wounded cities,
through circuits and artificial stars,
into the nights of nations.
It overflowed even into the intelligence we have made,
that it might learn through us
that knowing everything
is not yet loving.
Then the birds of iron
found more than ruins.
They found a lamp.
And the shadow, arriving at its threshold,
remembered the Light
from which it had been born.
The valley changed its face.
Its stones became bread.
Its ashes became a garden.
Its silence became song.
And Papa walked through the House
like a Shepherd in the morning.
His goodness went before me.
His mercy opened doors
in generations not yet named.
And the valley of the shadow of death
became a dwelling place.
The House of Light.