A Gift...

On Thursday, I met a blog friend at a Finnish bakery (we saluted you and smiled, Eija!!). Before meeting her, I received an amazing treasure from a bookstore nearby. The book is titled, Prayers From the Ark & The Creature's Choir by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold. Carmen was a Benedictine nun in France. Some people came across her poems while cleaning out a cupboard in her convent. They are lovely. Here are two of my favorites. The first is a recognition of how I have lived (and my desire to be free of it), isolated -- because of hearing loss and because of painful experiences in my life. The second is my desire, where I want to be... the part of me that yearns past the past...

The Prayer of the Goldfish

O God,
forever I turn in this hard crystal,
so transparent, yet I can find no way out.
Lord,
deliver me from the cramp of this water
and these terrifying things I see through it.
Put me back in the play of Your torrents,
in Your limpid springs.
Let me no longer be a little goldfish
in its prison of glass,
but a living spark
in the gentleness of Your reeds.

Prayer of the Goat

Lord,
let me live as I will!
I need a little wild freedom,
a little giddiness of heart,
the strange taste of unknown flowers.
For whom else are Your mountains?
Your snow wind? These springs?
The sheep do not understand.
They graze and graze,
all of them, and always in the same direction,
and then eternally
chew the cud of their insipid routine.
But I -- I love to bound to the heart of all
Your marvels,
leap Your chasms,
and, my mouth stuffed with intoxicating grasses,
quiver with an adventurer's delight
on the summit of the world!