After a dream in which your love’s fullness
Was heaven and earth, I stood on nothing in darkness,
Neither finding nor falling, without hope nor dread,
Not knowing pleasure nor discontented.
In time, like the first beam arriving from
The first star, a ray from a seed of light came,
Whose source, coming nearer (I could not say whether
It rose or descended, for there was no higher nor lower),
To a trumpet’s thin sweet highest note
Which grew to the pitch of pain, showed how its white
Light proceeded all from a blue crystal stone
Large as a child’s skull, shaped so, lucent as when
Daylight strikes sideways through a cat’s eyes;
Blue not blinding, its light did not shine but was;
And came, as the trumpet pierced through into silence,
To hover so close before my hands
That I might have held it, but that one does not handle
What one accepts as a miracle.
A great sapphire it was whose light and cradle
Held all things: there were the delights of skies, though
Its cloudness blue was different; of sea and meadow,
But their shapes not seen. The stone unheld was mine,
But yours the sense by which, without further sign
I recognized its visionary presence
By its clarity, its changeless patience,
And the unuttered joy that it was,
As the world’s love before the world was.
The Sapphire
Did you enjoy the the artible “The Sapphire” from William Stanley Merwin on OZOFE.COM? Do you know anyone who could enjoy it as much as you do? If so, don't hesitate to share this post to them and your other beloved ones.
Leave a Reply