The Sarabite: Towards an Aesthetic Christianity

There is a continuous attraction, beginning with God, going to the world, and ending at last with God, an attraction which returns to the same place where it began as though in a kind of circle. -Marsilio Ficino

Thursday, February 14, 2008

For AG



You are my prayer

In the painless sunset
That has not yet set,
And in the mist that veils
The splendor of the
Noonday sun,

I have uttered a word
Incapable of longing,

It passes through the grass
And is silent in noise.

Painting the day a
Dull shade of light,
Fading all sorrow into
Shadows of fog-

It is you I have uttered:
That face, those eyes,

Eternal filling of tireless space,
The universe folded up,
A deep pant, a smile,
The embrace and the sighs.

I have heaven here in my hand,
A dizzying state-
A thousand feet of falling
Into a pit of song
Arm in arm-

High Mass in a floating cathedral,
A hymn,
This gentle rustling of beads
In old hands,

As if God pulled up a new Law
Out of a basket of flowers,

A new Faith where everything is you
And you are all,
The muted passing of
Waves and birds.

The night is so far away
In the distance.

You are the scriptures,
The temple, the second coming,
And the empty tomb.

You are my prayer
Uttered at the gates of paradise:

The key and the throne,
And the tree of life.

-Arturo Vasquez