from Sonnets for Michelangelo — 31

If this little music, stirring the frail air,

can gather up the spirit,

open it and melt it as it does —

If this mere breeze of sound, this mortal voice,

can lift the heart so,

heal it, startling thought and firing our resolve —

what will that heart do when,

before God in the first and ancient heaven,

it hears the music of all being?

When, struck by truth, it steps forth

in the great wind of that singing?

~Vittoria Colonna (translation by Jan Zwicky)