Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Jacopone da Todi––"Love Beyond All Telling" (poem)
This early poet expresses beautifully the journey of the soul to union, just as we experience it today. Truly he is timeless.
Love beyond all telling (from Self-Annihilation and Charity Lead the Soul...)
By Jacopone da Todi (Jacopone Benedetti)
(1230 - 1306)
English version by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes
Love beyond all telling,
Goodness beyond imagining,
Light of infinite intensity
Glows in my heart.
I once thought that reason
Had led me to You,
And that through feeling
I sensed Your presence,
Caught a glimpse of You in similitudes,
Knew You in Your perfection.
I know now that I was wrong,
That that truth was flawed.
Light beyond metaphor,
Why did You deign to come into this darkness?
Your light does not illumine those who think they see You
And believe they sound Your depths.
Night, I know now, is day,
Virtue no more to be found.
He who witnesses Your splendor
Can never describe it.
On achieving their desired end
Human powers cease to function,
And the soul sees that what it thought was right
Was wrong. A new exchange occurs
At that point where all light disappears;
A new and unsought state is needed:
The soul has what it did not love,
And is stripped of all it possessed, no matter how dear.
In God the spiritual faculties
Come to their desired end,
Lose all sense of self and self-consciousness,
And are swept into infinity.
The soul, made new again,
Marveling to find itself
In that immensity, drowns.
How this comes about it does not know.
-- from Jacopone da Todi: Lauds (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes
