Meister Eckhart

To reach these common nuns

I must speak common German.

 

Invent a language by bending it

back into itself standing firmly on nothing.

 

For to attain God everything must go:

will, self, knowledge, word, God Himself,

 

to love Him as He is: non-God

non-image, hidden in the ground

 

of soul buried, destroyed, sinking

int the Godhead from nothing to nothing

 

down inside the self a silent

bottomless sea touching nothing,

 

no creatures that are all His speaking

heard only in the abyss of stillness

 

when knowing knows unknowing,

thought self shatters, bereft of thing…

 

Yet my fellow Dominicans are confused

as they defend me and burn my lay followers.

 

They dare not yet seek my head

tortured empty of the images,

 

idols they have engraved in text

and the smoking flesh of heretics.

 

I am no heretic. Their faith is words.

Mine unspeakable.

 

[first published at Eureka Street online, Australia, 2009]

 

 

~ by peterln on November 7, 2009.