Monday, March 16, 2015

OFFICIUM PARVUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS



OFFICIUM PARVUM
BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS

What voices, in what languages, before
what altars have reiterated thy
most ancient eulogies, have lifted high
the dim melodious burden of the Psalms?
(their overtones are here, forever more.)
within what moated castles, near what palms,
in what lost country and beneath what sky?
What distance have thy praises come since first
a monarch dreamed about his hillside days,
remembering the wind, the sun, the thirst,
"as in a desert and a pathless place"?
from in principio to nunc is long,
and we who speak but scarcely know the sense
of what we say, live in another tense
than Ananias, Jacob, Zachary,
yet from our uninitiate lips the song
pours like the ointment worth a hundred pence
and bathes the wounded Feet of Royalty.

Sister M Bernetta
America. 31 May 1947

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Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis - Short Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
From 'in principio' to 'nunc' - From 'In the begiinning' to 'now'

From 'A Silence full of bells'

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