Pentecost, 2009: Come South Wind by Jessica Powers

"By South Wind is meant the Holy Spirit who awakens love." (St John of the Cross)

Over and over I say to the South wind: come,
waken in me and warm me!
I have walked too long with a death's chill in the air,
mourned over trees too long with branches bare.
Ice has a falsity for all its brightness
and so has need of your warm reprimand.
A curse be on the snow that lapsed from whiteness,
and all bleak days that paralyze my land.

I am saying all day to Love who wakens love:
rise in the south and come!
Hurry me into springtime; hustle the winter
out of my sight; make dumb
the north wind's loud impertinence. Then plunge me
into my leafing and my blossoming,
and give me pasture, sweet and sudden pasture.
Where could the Shepherd bring
his flocks to graze? Where could they rest at noonday?
O south wind, listen to the woe I sing!
One whom I love is asking for the summer
from me, who am still distances from spring.

(1954; 1984)