Think Twice Before Blogging?

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau

The Samaritan woman

poem #6 in the series Song of the Brightness of Water
by Karol Wojtyla

It joined us together, the well;
the well led me into you
No one between us but light
deep in the well, the pupil of the eye
set in an orbit of stones.

Within your eyes, I,
drawn by the well,
am enclosed.

Conversation he had within her: and the people from the wall of evening

poem #5 in the series Song of the Brightness of Water
by Karol Wojtyla

This they seem to say,
the people from the wall of evening:
Don’t think You walk alone. You have companions
such as I, changed by your meditation
in us, yes, your meditation in us,
as if a word, a frail word was simply grafted,
grafted on to the brightness –
yes, such as I,
raised in the dark of trampled stars.

That woman is among the people from
the wall of evening
And He is now speaking to them
through her:
You don’t walk alone, ever.
Not for a moment, never
is my profile separate from you
and in you it becomes truth,
it always becomes truth
and the tearing so deep,
of your living wave.

My face is scorched by the desert,
deep in your souls,
and is always blown away
by the breathing of your tired sleep.
Why don’t you take your own cross
out of me, as I took mine from you?
when it was burning in your arms, hanging
in your heavy breath.

They:
When in this sad wall of evening
you find our faces, slippery
from the light of many lamps,
like fishes’ flesh –
but blood, we have blood,
we could strike blows with blood!

He:
I have come to outweigh
blood with blood
I have come to seek
weariness, being like you.

Later recollection of the meeting

poem #4 in the series Song of the Brightness of Water
by Karol Wojtyla

To see like this, inwardly, none of us dares.
His recognition was different. He hardly raised his eyes.
He was a great gathering of perception –
like the well blowing the brightness of water
into a face.
He had a mirror – like the well – shining deep.
For him no need to come out of himself or
raise his eyes to guess.
He saw me in himself, possessed me
in himself.
He suffused me with ease,
burst my shame in me and the thoughts
I’d suppressed for so long.
As if he – touching a rhythm in my temples –
all of a sudden
carried that great exhaustion
in me, with such care
Words were simple. The walked beside me
like charmed sheep.
But within me they take off:
dozing birds from their nests.

He was whole in my sin and my secret.

Tell me, this must have hurt, must have weighed
(thought-waves fall heavy, a metal lid) –
You keep silent, but today I know – open for ever
by your word – that I did not suffer in You
to my full measure.
Tell me – my love today
wants to bring back that pain,
take it from You and wind it round again
like a sharp band.

Too late. Every pain today
returning from You,
changes to love on its way.

Such a shortcut, such goodness of perception!
An You did not even raise your eyes.
You talked to me only with those eyes
which the well re-created
in its deep brightness.

Words spoken by the woman at the well, on departing

poem #3 in the series Song of the Brightness of Water
by Karol Wojtyla

From this moment my ignorance
closes behind me like the door
through which you entered, recognizing
all I do not know.
And through me you led many people in silence,
many roads, and the turmoil of the streets.