Saturday, September 06, 2008

...treasure from an Irish poet.





On its way through the innocent night,
The moth is ambushed by the light,
Becomes glued to a window
Where a candle burns; its whole self,

Its dreams of flight and all desire
Trapped in one glazed gaze;
Now nothing else can satisfy
But the deadly beauty of flame.

When you lose the feel
For all other belonging
And what is truly near
Becomes distant and ghostly,
And you are visited

And claimed by a simplicity
Sinister in its singularity,
No longer yourself, your mind
And will owned and steered
From elsewhere now,
You would sacrifice anything
To dance once more to the haunted
Music with your fatal beloved
Who owns the eyes of your heart.

These words of blessing cannot
Reach, even as echoes,
To the shore of where you are,
Yet may they work without you
To soften some slight line through
To the white cave where
Your soul is captive.

May some glimmer
Of outside light reach your eyes
To help you recognize how
You have fallen for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon
Onto real ground again
Where this fundamentalist
Shell might start to crack
For you to hear
Again your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart
Might learn to cry out
For the true intimacy
Of love that waits
To take you home

To where you are known
And seen and where
Your life is treasured
Beyond every frontier
Of despair you have crossed.


(The blessing: John O'Donohue's "For an Addict" ~ The image: my creation, symbolic of so many thoughts swirling in my mind this week)

2 comments:

christianne said...

This poem really makes connections to Rolheiser's Holy Longing in my mind, all about the desire burning within us and how the energy is necessary to keep us alive, yet how it is possible to become fragmented, disintegrated, and lost in apathy when we lose that spark of life and the glue that holds us uniquely together.

Wow. You created that image? It's beautiful. Stunning. Brilliant in its bright colors.

Barbara said...

I love the way Rolheiser talks about energy! It makes spiritual formation seem so much more possible - a matter of channeling our energy toward God via the disciplines...rather than toward the destructive habits that damage our souls and isolate us from others.

Yeah, I'm not sure the image is done yet...it's been evolving all week. Erika inspired me to explore my software more creatively.