dominic wrote:
>Self-exploitation, self-mutilation, is not necessarily less reprehensible.
Mystics
“Navigatio Sancti Brendani “ (by Erminia Passannanti)
many of the most creative celebrants
travelled across the alps
and did not return
empty handed
nobody ever
saw one single cloud following
saint Brendan
to cast a shadow over his value
a value of great significance and worth
for a saint who would
gladly show his naked ankle
and trod over foreign ground
followed by many sparrows and moles
and quite a few friars of equal value
also by a crow and a grey vulture
that had just banqueted
on the rests of a black sheep
and thus the travel became
mission
a travel conceived
in accordance with the rules
of sacrifice and abnegation
a travel of shuddering
and spells when the air becomes finer
and love shakes the gutters
and Saint Brendan’s desire of flesh
became immense
so that a single push could not
extinct it
and a single gush could satisfy its famine
in this epigrammatic adventure
the duration of several years
much reputation grew
around the portentous figure of this man
that no one could defeat
and who could focus upon
the erection of basilicas convents
for barefoot nuns
and crucifixes inhabited
by echoes of solitude and beauty
fashioning diversity
from sacredness
a mystic of theoretical depth
brendano,
a saint much respected
by the common Italian man.
Copyrights E.Passannanti, Mistici, 2001
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