Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
Mitis ut colomba (Gentle as a dove)
To Alain Santacreu
‘Dextera Domini fecit virtutem,
dextera Domini exaltavit me :
non moriar, sed vivam,
ed narrabo opera Domini'
(The right hand of the Lord has shown its power :
the right hand of the Lord has lifted me:
I will not die, rather I will live
and will recount the works of the Lord.)
Mass of the Third Sunday after Epiphany
How full of poetry they are,
the heraldic descriptions
of all those ancient families
which created France's glory.
Ah, my dear Alain!
I will quote just three
to send you into a reverie
and light up your passionately generous heart
with the happy glow shed by nobility:
‘Azure with a fleur de lys or and
a fess of gules,
charged dexter with a crescent argent cantonné
and sinister a sun or.'
This, my dear Alain, is the coat of arms
of the Marquis Ripert d'Alauzir.
‘Gules a gold chevron and
three roses argent.'
And this, my friend, that of Reynaud, Count of Montlosier!
‘Gules a fess azur semé,
charged with three besants or and
three anchored crosses argent.'
(This is the coat of arms of Ribaut de Laugardière,
du Mesnil, de l'Isle, a noble family from Normandy,
which in the 15th century, held the château of Mesnil,
the bailiwick of Gisor, the fiefdom of Plainet-Armet
in tribute to the King; in 1607 they held the château
of Mesnil-Saint-Jore, near Rouen, and,
in 1755, the fiefdom of Laugardière, near Beaupréau.)
I read all this and I feel flowing towards my heart
the radiant undertows of heraldic words,
the armoured batallions commanded by the high-born,
I hear the river of naked time roar
and I hear the clink of golden spurs!
O kind considerate words!
O words which cast light with their innocent beauty!
O lovely words of our elevated,
princely, fleur de lys strewn
French language:
Honour, dignity, esteem,
devoutness, veneration, decency,
respect, praise and triumph,
honesty, conscience, uprightness,
dignity, correctness, fidelity,
frankness, integrity, loyalty,
propriety, probity, sacrifice,
tact, distinction, politeness,
modesty, purity and wisdom!
This holy glorious words,
virtuous, august, venerable!
These sacred words, my dear Alain,
pulsing light become resonant matter,
these sacramental martyred words
which gather bright fruits,
the splendour of faces, the mercy of hands
and the angelic charity of wheatfields
so as to transform them into an offertory!
Ah, my heart, what are you do? Do you exist
outside this transparency of language,
outside this ecstatic movement
which leads to sublime
perfection?
My friend, I don't want, no, my soul doesn't want
a life fragmented
into a thousand miserable little eternities
of passing pleasure!
What can we do? We who wonder unloosed in the middle of the crowd
until we die?
What can we do, you or I, poets amazed by everything?
The only thing left to us is to lose ourselves in love,
to forget ourselves totally, open ourselves to the ultimate depth of the sky,
to the deepest ground of human existence!
We can live, meeting with unutterable grace
things in their untouched purity
as they spring up again from their primordial origin.
We can be those whose only task is to sing the Being of things,
of all things, even as we know, dear Alain,
the divine Logos, which is revealed and can't be deconstructed,
which is full of grace and truth!
What does it matter, my Friend?
We love, we hope,
we will always be light!
Translated from the French by Norton Hodges
Comment On This Poem ---
Mitis ut colomba (Gentle as a dove)
Mitis ut colomba (Gentle as a dove)