Come, South Wind: A Poem for Pentecost

Mr. Eddie Calasanz emailed me this truly lovely poem by the American poet Jessica Powers as a Pentecost gift. Powers is also known by her name in religion, Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD. She died in 1988 and is buried in the Carmel of the Mother of God in Wisconsin.

This poem calls forth my own poorly expressed but deeply felt prayer for myself and for us this Pentecost:

Come, Love who awakens love. 

Come, burning Fire of God's own infinite love. 

Come South wind, blow warmth into the sterile and wintry inscapes of our hearts,

provoke sudden springs and lush summers, 

that we might become sanctuary and pasture, 

home and nourishment, 

for my beloved Shepherd's hungry flock.

COME, SOUTH WIND

        '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?
0 south wind, listen to the woe I sing!
One whom I love is asking for the summer from me,
who still am distances from spring.

              --Jessica Powers