Dark Night of the Soul

In typical conversionary fervor, I've taken more saints names than I can keep straight, but in honor of my number 1 saint (I like ranking things [in typical female fashion, I think]) and his feast day:

One dark night,

fired with love's urgent longings

- ah, the sheer grace! -

I went out unseen,

my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,

by the secret ladder, disguised,

- ah, the sheer grace! -

in darkness and concealment,

my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night

in secret, for no one saw me,

nor did I look at anything

with no other light or guide

than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me

more surely than the light of noon

to where he was awaiting me

- him I knew so well -

there in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!

O night more lovely than the dawn!

O night that has united

the Lover with his beloved,

transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Upon my flowering breast,

which I kept wholly for him alone,

there he lay sleeping,

and I caressing him

there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,

as I parted his hair,

it wounded my neck

with its gentle hand,

suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,

laying my face on my Beloved;

all things ceased; I went out from myself,

leaving my cares

forgotten among the lilies.

Only a couple of points: This is an apt advent poem, as Christmas is one night "that has united / the Lover with his beloved, / transforming the beloved in her Lover." Additionally, these lines (particularly the penultimate stanza) were certainly an influence on T.S. Eliot, who, in the Four Quartets, writes, "The wounded surgeon plies the steel // ... Beneath the bleeding hands we feel / The sharp compassion of the healer's art."