Monday Poetry: Roman Triptych - The Stream: Pt 1 - Wonderment

I know that the title is a mouthful, but it is an excerpt from Blessed John Paul the Great's poem, Roman Triptych.

I love the imagery of how man is distinct from all other beautiful things in creation and, in a sense, that beauty finds its meaning in man.


I. The Stream
Ruah
The Spirit of God hovered above the waters. 1. Wonderment
The undulating wood slopes down
to the rhythm of mountain streams.
To me this rhythm is revealing You,
the Primordial Word.
How remarkable is Your silence
in everything, in all that on every side
unveils the created world around us ...
all that, like the undulating wood,
runs down every slope ...
all that is carried away by the stream's
silvery cascade,
rhythmically falling from the mountain,
carried by its own current—carried where?
What are you saying to me, mountain stream?
Where, in which place, do we meet?
Do you meet me who is also passing—
just like you.
But is it like you?
(Allow me to pause here;
allow me to stop at a threshold,
the threshold of simple wonder).
The running stream cannot marvel,
and silently the woods slope down,
following the rhythm of the stream—
but man can marvel!
The threshold which the world crosses in him
is the threshold of wonderment.
(Once, this very wonder was called "Adam").
He was alone in his wonder,
among creatures incapable of wonder—
for them it is enough to exist and go their way.
Man went his way with them,
filled with wonder!
But being amazed, he always emerged
from the tide that carried him,
as if saying to everything around him:
"Stop—in me is your harbour",
"in me is the place of meeting
with the Primordial Word".
"Stop, this passing has meaning ...
has meaning ... has meaning".