Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591)
I live yet do not live in me,
am waiting as my life goes by,
and die
because I do not die.
No longer do I live in me,
and without God I cannot live;
to him or me
I cannot give
my self, so what can living be?
A thousand deaths my
agony
waiting as my life goes by,
dying because I do not die.
This life I live alone I view
as robbery of life, and so
it is a
constant death — with no
way out until I live with you.
God, hear me, what
I say is true:
I do not want this life of mine,
and die because I do not
die.
Being so removed from you I say
what kind of life can I have here
but
death so ugly and severe
and worse than any form of pain?
I pity me — and
yet my fate
is that I must keep up this lie,
and die because I do not
die.
The fish taken out of the sea
is not without a consolation:
his dying
is of brief duration
and ultimately brings relief.
Yet what convulsive
death can be
as bad as my pathetic life?
The more I live the more I
die.
When I begin to feel relief
on seeing you in the sacrament,
I sink in
deeper discontent,
deprived of your sweet company.
Now everything compels
my grief:
I want — yet can’t — see you nearby,
and die because I do not
die.
Although I find my pleasure, Sir,
in hope of someday seeing you,
I see
that I can lose you too,
which makes my pain doubly severe,
and so I live
in darkest fear,
and hope, wait as life goes by,
dying because I do not
die.
Deliver me from death, my God,
and give me life; now you have wound
a
rope about me; harshly bound
I ask you to release the cord.
See how I die
to see you, Lord,
and I am shattered where I lie,
dying because I do not
die.
My death will trigger tears in me,
and I shall mourn my life: a
day
annihilated by the way
I fail and sin relentlessly.
O Father God,
when will it be
that I can say without a lie:
I live because I do not
die?
St. John of the Crosstranslated by Willis Barnstonefound in “Poems of St. John of the Cross”
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