101. Mother of Consolation (Paul Mariani)
"What you look hard at looks back hard at you."
He visto las primeras iridáceas, mi flor favorita: el Iris Salvaje (cf. Louise Glück, Mary Oliver), la flor de lis (originalmente, la fleur de l’iris (?) ⚜).
He imprimido las cinco copias de la tesis para el tribunal. Cada vez, qué bien, más fuera de mis manos.
He dado ochocientas vueltas en la biblioteca. Me acordado de la palabreja que aprendí el otro día: “Faffing around”, “to spend your time doing a lot of things that are not important instead of the thing that you should be doing”. He visto a Sister A, que siempre está sentada en el mismo sitio, en lo que tiene que hacer, y le he dicho que me resultaba inspirador ver esa concentración y constancia. Ha sacado su agenda y se ha apuntado el día de la defensa. Tengo una pequeña armada en oración.
Últimamente me paso más por la basílica del Campus. El otro día estuve rezando en la capilla bizantina a la que nunca le había prestado mucha atención hasta que J.J me dijo que tenía la Virgen más bonita de toda la basílica—un icono, con el Niño. Y sí, creo que sí.
MOTHER OF CONSOLATION
Paul Mariani
What you look hard at looks back hard at you.
As in this icon, where the child with the deer-
Brown eyes gazes at something just beyond your view,
This child king who spreads blessing everywhere.
Blood of his mother’s blood, bone of her bone.
Identical the mouth, the nose, the eyes.
You can see he is his mother’s son, and hers alone,
In any way one’s DNA supplies
If too he is his Father’s Son, how can you know
But by what burns behind the gaze, or in
The innocence of blessing? And even then there’s no
Way to know until you touch the mystery within.
And for that you will have first to understand
What it is you gaze at with the same dim eyes
Too long glutted on the sensual, the bland,
The million million flyspecked buzzing lies.
The scrim of sight is dimmed with sick desire.
The Buddha knew this, and Blake, and Dante too.
How hard, O how very hard to re-ignite the fire,
The inner flame that lets us look upon these two,
These two whose gaze gives back peace again,
But only if we learn to turn the outward gaze into
The gaze within, the child’s eyes remembering the When,
The mother’s doe-brown eyes as she turns to gaze at you.