Perseverance

I sit with you, alone, in a dark, mercilessly exact-angled room.
There are no windows, no doors; I know,
because I have felt every square inch with fevered swipes.
I know all the pock-marks in the walls and the undulations of the floor.
I sit now, cross-legged; 

I have remembered to stop
searching for that tempting hole,
the one that is, in truth, only big enough for a rat to squeeze through
and would require me to shrink too far.

You, Lord, are Other, and I feel no comfort.
But because You are sitting here, 

I feel you have invited me
to sit.
So, I have stopped running in circles, 

and the silence
of the room, Your silence, fills me up.
You don't tell me the purpose of this entrapment,
this prison of pain,
but You have been there, You are there,
and You are here.

Mary

Mary saw the shining reflection under created things: 

the stones she swept were jewels uncovered,

the dust particles whirling in the gentle air

were tiny birds with luminous wings.

The sounds of birth and death, she did not avoid:

she heard the converging
which did not make a static and sterile prayer,

but rather a song, golden, unalloyed.

Being sang the recesses of her soul, she heard the hymn:

on the swaying donkey covered by glinting dust,

she heard the shining silver reeds 

as the edges of the world curled toward Bethlehem.

 

 

paintings 1) Le divin apprenti 2) Alma mater, by Virginie Demont-Breton