VI
BODY AND SOUL

Enamored of your body and linked
to it by universal love, your soul
abandoned it in death, not like one who
escapes from prison with a sigh of relief,
but like a home where one longs
to abide forever, in the normal state
of happiness. The final lament came
from a fathomless source, the separation
of flesh that was torn from a spirit
that had become flesh. Silence continued.
And when all was quiet in an intimate calm,
everything became dark; light is music,
but alas for the believer who cannot hear it!
Resting in the cold darkness while it
recovers from its agony, your soul gazes
on its former body which it has left
in the claws of the cross, hanging from
the nails, and as it looks, it feels a love
even more vital than life itself. Without it,
how could it bask in the Sun? Where
could it catch the light? How could it
reach for the hand of the Father in order
to grasp it? And with an obscure fear
of merging with an endless darkness
and vanishing like a gust of wind, it longed
to return to its vessel—flesh and bone—;
it misses the infinite beauty of its body
and tries to find its borders; it wants to feel
the boundaries of its territory; it longs
to be contained within its limits!