Song to the Apostle
What winds propel your oars?
Where are you going with your arms full of stars
and your eyes blazing like the sun?
Where are your eternal roots
of dreams, of gaze, and love born?
I saw you set a fire with high, jagged flames
in the inner forests of men
where avarice , pride and impiety graze.
I saw you touch the depths of man
where the regions of mists begin
and man loses the paths to God.
How you flooded their eyes of eternal night
with luminous radiance!
Raise your voice of bronze, prophet,
like a medieval tower,
against the mute loneliness of men,
against the dog pack of megalomaniacs
who erect a statue and a god to themselves at every street corner.
Be aware that profane voices from the east and from the moon
will spring forth on your path
wanting to devour your eternally raised voice of bronze.
Light the burned-out star that men carry
in the middle of their forehead.
Infinite paths over silent spaces
have surged before your eyes;
and there are wells of wreckage, mourning and death
that await your anxious gaze every afternoon.
Break your voice like a harp, against the blind lights
that drown man’s angel
and sadden his innocence, his eyes and his forehead.
Quicken your heartbeat,
because airs of impatience and agonizing urgencies are afloat.
When your body finally rolls
down the steep slopes of death,
a giant rose bush full of dew and sunlight
will be afire.
By Father Jesús of Azpeitia (Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga), in Vértice Magazine. Pamplona,1952.
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