POETRY, THE LANGUAGE OF THE SOUL

SIR: I have recently re-read the Spanish version of 'Praying through Poetry' with great excitement. It is a book by Pepita da Silva, a professor that has always written poetry wherever the place and whatever the time. For her, writing poetry is a gratifying and vital necessity.

It is a way to show off life and to feel happy. I have chosen one of her poems:

'While soundless sleeps the Earth vast, / her silence retracts, / and enlarged are the contrasts / of her immense spaced spans /

Words are withdrawn, / the big become small, / death becomes life, / and pain, eternal love /

The trembling hands of a man / raise up to range / a God who will captivate / and transform once embraced /

And before that hidden beauty, / of that time sublime, / the soul gradually escapes, / and it is His shapes it takes /

That's when the human and holy, / in miraculous harmony, / merge and intertwine / in an encounter divine /

God becomes the owner / of the now owned soul / and that divine yearning that loners / changes doubt into a mystery once more /

The mystery becomes idyll, / the idyll becomes fire, / and that's how loves are conceived and bridle / between Earth and Heaven admired.'

The poet writes a sort of spiritual haiku, and succeeds in finding a perfect merge between material reality and transcendence. She knows how to transform poetry into language of the soul.