Luminous Decay

The pause when all the world came to a stop.  Your face contains all the beauty of the earthly world.  Your lips, crimson as the ripening fruit, part in pain.  The smile of a corpse.  Now death reaches out a hand to life.  The chain is joined that links the thousands of generations that are dead to the thousands that are to come.

Last Poem

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real. Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again? I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my  chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body. For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow. O scales of feeling. I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.  I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who  counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby. I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much  with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom  among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the  moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.  Mike DelGaudio - Holding Hands Shadow on Sand

Stanzas Of The Soul

1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! - 
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! - 
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well - 
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

 

From: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991).

Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.

To the Silenced

Oh, the great city's madness when at nightfall

The crippled trees gape by the blackened wall,
The spirit of evil peers from a silver mask;
Lights with magnetic scourge drive off the stony night.
Oh, the sunken pealing of evening bells.

Whore who in her icy shivers sheds a still-born child.
With raving whips God's fury punishes brows possessed.
Purple pestilence, hunger that breaks green eyes.
Oh, the horrible laughter of gold.

But silent in dark caves a stiller humanity bleeds,
Out of hard metals moulds the redeeming head. 

Infinitely

The hounds of despair, the hounds of the autumnal wind, 
Gnaw with their howling the black echoes of evenings. 
The darkness, immensely, gropes in the emptiness 
For the moon, seen by the light of water. 

From point to point, over there, the distant lights, 
And in the sky, above, dreadful voices 
Coming and going from the infinity of the marshes and planes 
To the infinity of the valleys and the woods. 

And roadways that stretch out like sails 
And pass each other, coming unfolded in the distance, soundlessly, 
While lengthening beneath the stars, 
Through the shadows and the terror of the night.

Indra

Down to the sand-covered earth.  Straw from the harvested fields soiled our feet;  Dust from the high-roads,  Smoke from the cities,  Foul-smelling breaths,  Fumes from cellars and kitchens,  All we endured.  Then to the open sea we fled,  Filling our lungs with air,  Shaking our wings,  And laving our feet.  Indra, Lord of the Heavens,  Hear us!  Hear our sighing!  Unclean is the earth;  Evil is life;  Neither good nor bad  Can men be deemed.  As they can, they live,  One day at a time.  Sons of dust, through dust they journey;  Born out of dust, to dust they return.  Given they were, for trudging,  Feet, not wings for flying.  Dusty they grow--  Lies the fault then with them,  Or with Thee?  Translated by Edwin Bjorkman

                                  THE MINER

•  

  Beetling  rock, with roar and smoke

  Break before my hammer-stroke!

  Deeper I must thrust and lower

  Till I hear the ring of ore.

   

  From the mountain's unplumbed night,

  Deep amid the gold-veins bright,

  Diamonds lure me, rubies beckon,

  Treasure-hoard that none may reckon.

   

  There is peace within the deep--

  Peace and immemorial sleep;

  Heavy hammer, burst as bidden,

  To the heart-nook of the hidden!

   

  Once I, too, a careless lad,

  Under starry heavens was glad,

  Trod the primrose paths of summer,

  Child-like knew not care nor cummer.

   

  But I lost the sense of light

  In the poring womb of night;

  Woodland songs, when earth rejoiced her,

  Breathed not down my hollow cloister.

   

  Fondly did I cry, when first

  Into the dark place I burst:

  "Answer spirits of the middle

  Earth, my life's unending riddle!--"

   

  Still the spirits of the deep

  Unrevealed their answer keep;

  Still no beam from out the gloomy

  Cavern rises to illume me.

   

  Have I erred? Does this way lead

  Not to clarity indeed?

  If above I seek to find it,

  By the glare my eyes are blinded.

   

  Downward, then! the depths are best;

  There is immemorial rest.

  Heavy hammer burst as bidden

  To the heart-nook of the hidden!--

   

  Hammer-blow on hammer-blow

  Till the lamp of life is low.

  Not a ray of hope's fore-warning;

  Not a glimmer of the morning.

  
  

  Translated by Fydell Edmund Garret

  

  
  

  Georg Engelhard Löhneysen 1552–1622

Below the Sultry Storm

BELOW the sultry storm that seemed to lower,
An alien force, again I heard the call
Of my mysterious mate: the prisoned power
Of old dreams flared and flickered in its fall.
And with a cry of horror and of dolor—
As of an eagle in an iron vise—
My spirit shook its cage in quivering choler,
And tore the net, and issued to the skies.
And up behind the clouds, unswerving, bearing,—
Before the miracles—a flaming sea—
Within the shining sanctum briefly flaring,
It vanished into white infinity. Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky John Martin 1789-1854 -  - Great Day of His Wrath

The Sonnet of Gems

Here lavishly these jewels among all men I share;
In the high fire of living I crystallized their truth,
And in their depths I mirrored the miracle of youth,
And Art has stroked them gently to make them shine forever.

Like a devout apprentice I bent and toiled and tried
Till from my soul I plucked them when daybreak is agleam,
And pure were they, yeah, purer than Beauty’s eyes of dream;
Enduring, too, I made them, forever to abide.

Now let Age set its signet upon the man that is
And will be for some time yet — and then let Death set his:
These gems of the first waters, profound and motionless,

Defying human meanness and human envious rage
And standing out in ever more brilliant sacredness,
Shall ne’er be lost to ages, nor bear the stain of age.

Translated by Dan Duţescu

The Ghost

Henry Fuseli 1741 - 1825 - The Nightmare