ATHANASE VANTCHEV DE THRACY - Elévation sur la beauté

précédent < Two seizures of the soul > suivant

For Vito Paolo Quatrocchi

« Just for today, may Your face
not be hidden from me.”

St Thérèse of Lisieux

In the gap between two seizures of the soul,
the word enfolds the word,
the breeze warms the breeze,
and the hand of love extends the world
far into the extreme caress of the poem.

And we remain dazzled, marvelling, fascinated
under the rippling deep-feeling yews
in the dense indigo of the night,
seeking in what begins on our lips
the silent path that hastens
towards the unaccustomed, the unknown, the never seen.

And suddenly everything is incorruptible ecstasy,
golden yellow light
and immortal sweetness.

II.

“Cast the mantle of Your richness
over my poverty
and my mediocrity.”

Dhu’l Nun al-Misri

Who could love you, O you,
Unquestionable, limitless knowledge of love?
Intimate, profound, secret eternal knowledge!

Poem built on so much silence,
on so many ecstatic solitudes
where the almandine freshness of fountains,
the silky blaze of summer,
the crystal breath of tall rose bushes
sway their elusive splendours!

Who could express such happiness,
bliss, fleshly contentment
in the fragrant July rain?
Who? Who could know with their spring-gushing fingers
how to open, without swooning, the final Book
ff tenderness?

Who?

Translated from French by Norton Hodges

St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) – French mystic. Christian.

Dhu’l Nun al-Misri (796-861) – Arab mystic. Muslim.