Ecstasy

Ecstasy

Ana Paula Arendt

God once said

to Saint Teresa d’Avila

that His favourite deed

and her highest achievement in love,

was simply this:

taring at the little bricks mortared into the wall

while she was uninspired in her adoration.

Not her deepest insights,

not her bravest words,

not her most sincere emotions.

Just the counting of 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 pass on the calendar,

and the hands of the clock ticking over,

waiting for my next letter,

for my next poems,

for the next flowers,

waiting for the next burst of blood

from my punctured heart.

What an indescribable feeling

and enduring orphic ecstasy

seeing you while you waited.

I was preparing for you

more newness in ancient oceans,

the fantasy of trees contorted by 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 of 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.