It’s hard enough to form
the letters, the curves and straights,
and not to lose the goal;
so monks copied scripture
not for its sacred sense
but to bring the mind back 
to the stone room, a candle,
a large page and a hand
laboring through the strokes
that shaped the mind’s own need.
Being there, in the hand’s movement,
made true the words they formed.

That all the words were shouldering
this one same truth
was clear to them – but not 
to those who came after, casting
for knowledge apart from shaping 
a C or an S just so.

Those who read and hope 
to borrow or thieve the truth
without the hand’s devotion –
as we hope, scanning a page, to find
an answer to what troubles us most –
discern familiar thoughts
but turn the page, dissatisfied.

Until late at night, fatigued,
we sit beneath a lamp
and begin to form the letters
that gather into words
we didn’t think were ours,
watching them stand upright
and bear what we know into the light.