And this is a poem that's also old,
from San Juan de Yepes, who's better known
as Saint John of the Cross.
He's a Spanish mystic, and he was a priest from old Castile.
It's not actually-- this is only, barely, a translation.
In my translation, it, sort of, became a poem to my wife, CD,
and I don't think Saint John of the Cross
would quite recognize it.
[LAUGHTER]
But he might approve.
"In the beginning, the word was as being in happiness,
infinitely, the word possessed.
The same word being was said to be beginning.
Beginninglessly, it went on, Its voice a fervid world.
For the word, from the outset, always
was conceiving, concentrating its consequence.
For glory, in the word, possessed the being.
And all of beings going, it gleaned in the word.
Lover, in beloved in, the other one went on.
And that love which entwined them was of the same substance.
Two voices-- one beloved, among two.
And in them each, one happiness rendered them one lover.
And whose substance they gleamed as to possess one being, each,
alone, possessed it.
Each of them in love, a plenum of the word,
whose being each one twined around the other, beyond
comprehension and ineffable not.
Such fervid love entwined the two together
in one voice, both possessed, a plenum of the world.
The more that love was one, the more of love there was."