Monday, April 15, 2019
The Secret Ecstatic––poem by Dorothy
The Secret Ecstatic
I moved forward
without teacher or text.
I knew nothing of the rules and regulations
laid out in tomes and manuals,
had no one to guide me
from past or recent times.
What I followed
was bliss
coursing through my body.
This lover arrived
touched every place
in my body,
opened every pore
in sensuous joy.
Even when my head opened
I had no name for it.
When I turned
this way or that
the bliss became supreme.
Finally I lay on the floor,
arms outstretched,
and said, 'Here I am God,
take me,
I am yours."
This one then became
my constant Lover,
and did not rest,
left nothing unawakened.
No one ever explained to me,
how this happened
or why.
I followed the path of ecstasy
for the rest of my life,
and wrote no books of analysis,
no tangled explanations.
I was content
to live in the mystery.
I hid from the scholars,
kept my rapture secret
from those who claimed they knew.
What could they offer
but derision and scorn?
How could they deal
with what was not written about,
thus obviously untrue?
Dorothy Walters
April 14, 2019
(painting by Jan Elvee)
