From The Cherubinic Pilgrim/Wanderer

My Heart is God’s Stove

If God is like a fire, my heart the stove must be,

In which his heat consumes the wood of vanity.

Each in his own element

The bird is in the air, the stone rests on the land,

The fish lives in the water, my spirit in God’s hand.

Spiritual alchemy

I am the metal heated in the Spirit’s stove and fire,

And what transforms me is the tincture, the Messiah.

On the same

No sooner in God’s fire have I been melted down

Than with his seal he stamps my essence as his own.

You must become a child

You must become a child or you will never go

Where all God’s children are: the door is much too low.

The unrest comes from you

It’s not from God or creatures that your disquiet springs:

You make your own unrest (O fool!) by your concern with things.

Only you fall short

If you could make your heart a manger for his birth

God would become once more a child upon this earth.

The spiritual voyage

The world’s my sea, God’s Spirit is my captain in command,

My body is the ship in which my soul comes home to land.

Eternity

What is eternity? It is not this nor that;

Not now, not then, not nothing; it is I know not what.

Not to feign is not to sin

What is it, not to sin? Ah sinner, ask no more;

The speechless flowers will tell you, if you step out of doors.

The way to the Creator

O wretched mortal man, stay not so long in thrall

To the base gaudy loves and colors of this world;

The beauty of creation is but a bridge at best,

Leading to the creator in whom all beauties rest.

The heart is immense

The heart that time and space can fully gratify

Has still not understood its own immensity.

On Mary Magdalen

Ah, what can she be thinking of, poor Mary Magdalen,

To fall confessing at Christ’s feet before the eyes of men?

Ask not, but look upon her eyes, and marvel how they shine:

Is it not clear that she has drunk too deeply of love’s wine?

What God most loves to do

Of all the works that God most dearly loves to do

The best is that he brings his Son to birth in you.

The spiritual crabwalk

Lower yourself, my friend, to gain the highest place;

As soon as you stop running, you can begin the race.

All earthly things must go

Unless you can throw overboard what you love best on earth,

Your ship will not in Heaven’s port find its eternal berth.

The world is a grain of sand

How does the world prevent us from seeing God on high?

It is a grain of sand that irritates the eye.

Conclusion

Enough, my friend. Would you read more? Go hence,

And make yourself the writing and the sense.

~Angelus Silesius (translated from the German by Anthony Mortimer — from To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation edited by Burl Horniachek)