Who will open the book which is now closed?
Who make the first cut into unbroken time?
Turning the pages over, dawn to dawn,
lifting the pages up, casting them down?

Who of us dares reach into the furnace
of the not-yet-known? Who furthermore would dare
search through the dense leaves of the sealed book?
And who is there to do so with hands bare?

And who of us is not afraid? Who’d not be
when God himself has shut his eyes, and when
the angels all fall down before his face,
and when his creatures darken, every one?

The Lamb, alone of us, is not afraid,
he only, who was slain: the Lamb who (look!)
now comes clattering over the glass sea
and mounts the throne. And then, opens the book.

1961