Our Morning Offering – 9 September
Veni Creator
by Czeslaw Milosz
Come, Holy Spirit
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads
in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest
or when they plough in the orchards
or when snow covers
crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man:
I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked,
you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore, call one person,
anywhere on earth, – not me –
after all I have some decency – and allow me,
when I look at that person,
to marvel at YOU!