Donald Traxler's Poetry

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Sunning by the Pool

It was the twelfth of March,

twenty fourteen,

but it could have been

any day that summer,

or the one before,

or the next five.

South America had

slimmed me down,

made me brown.

My body greedily

drank up the rays,

heedless,

heedless of future days.

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Photo: There Is Nothing to Say

Time Is Nothing

Time is nothing:

what you have now,

you'll not have long.

What you assume today,

tomorrow will be wrong.

He Is the Proof of what Time Has Taken

He is the proof of what time has taken,

three-quarters of a century and more,

and also what time has given,

but not what time has in store.

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Friday, June 18, 2021

Informal Notes on De Imitatione Christi - IV

Liber III, Caput I

1. Audiam quid loquatur in me Dominus Deus.

I will hear what the Lord God speaks within me.

When I read these words the other day, I was struck by what a magnificent opening verse this is for the chapter whose subject is "De Interna Consolatione" (Of Interior Consolation). At the time, I was reading from the Vatican's "critical edition" of 1982, which does not make the sources of biblical quotations very obvious, and I didn't realize that this was a quotation of Psalm 84/85, v.9. But Thomas à Kempis' choice could not have been more appropriate to Book III, the mystical heart of his work, and its longest book.

I have translated the Latin literally. Some will notice that it is not the same as the Masoretic Text, or the KJV, or the RSV. It does agree with the Greek of the Septuagint (LXX, circa 100 BCE), and with the Vulgate, which is based on the LXX. Many (including me) believe that the best text of the Psalms is that of the LXX and the Vulgate. The LXX reflects a Hebrew text that is 500 years before St. Jerome, and eight or nine hundred before our oldest copy of the Masoretic Text. It would certainly be the best Hebrew text, and the best text of the Psalms, but unfortunately it has not survived, and can only be inferred from the LXX.

Anyway, this opening verse struck me so forcibly because of the support it gives to the main premise of mysticism, which is that direct communication with the Divine is possible. The institutional Church has always considered this idea a threat to its hierarchical power, but why should it not be true? Why indeed, since every branch of Christianity recognizes something called the Communion of Saints, by which we can communicate with the holy ones who have gone before us? Why should the members of the Mystical Body be able to communicate with each other, but not with the Head?

[to be continued]

Photo: Audiam quid loquatur

"I will hear what the Lord God speaks within me."

The Latin is St. Jerome's Latin in the Vulgate, based on the Greek of the Septuagint (circa 100 BCE).

Thomas à Kempis chose this quotation for the opening words of the magnificent Book III of his devotional work, De imitatione Christi.