Ecstasy

Ecstasy

Ana Paula Arendt

God once said

to Saint Teresa d’Avila

that His favourite deed

and her highest achievement in love

was staring at little bricks mortared into the wall

while she was uninspired in adoration.

Not her highest insights,

not her bravest words,

not her most sincere emotions.

Just counting the little bricks

bowed and bothered

when she could not pray anymore.

I could never understand the substance

of that incomparable joy in God’s feelings,

that ecstasy God shared with her...

…Until I glimpsed you,

tired and bothered

watching the days in the calendar,

and the hands of the clock

waiting for my next letter,

for my next poems,

for the next flowers,

waiting for

my next burst of blood in the punctured heart.

What an indescribable feeling

and enduring orphic ecstasy

while I was preparing for you

more newness in ancient oceans,

the phantasy of trees contorted in time,

and the beautiful thoughts from aeons

for adorning the Sun in your smile…

You, Love, you are the remnant

of all that was left to me

from the glory of my childhood,

my little love, my beloved…

You, Love, you are

the cosmological principle

organizing all beauty in the universe.

(From the Pink Book of Passion).

Special thanks to dear friends Murlee, Pradeep and Amirtha for the pictures in Chennai.