Friday, August 10, 2007
Teresa in Ecstasy
Bernini's great sculpture of Saint Teresa is located in Rome.
Teresa in Ecstasy
Bernini saw it.
Gave us
the woman in
her full inscrutable passion.
The angel stands near,
his arrow ready
to pierce her breast,
to lance her heart
again and again to love.
Nothing
in chapel or cell,
no soft telling of beads
or whispered hours
prepared her for this moment,
readied her for this time.
How, we wonder,
can she abide
this fiery rapture,
such sudden annihilation
into light?
How endure
this ultimate fusion,
relentless agony
of ascent?
Dorothy Walters
August 9, 2007.
