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.
