Embraced by New Time
(A poem by Pope John Paul II - translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz)

My depths are seen into, I am seen through and through.
Open to sight I rise, in that vision gently submerge.
For a long time nobody knew of this;
I told no one the expression of your eyes.

How attentive your stillness: it will always be part of me.
I lift myself toward it, will one day grow so used to it
that I will stand still, transparent as water vanishing
into a dry riverbed - though my body will remain.
Your disciples will come, and hear that my heart has
stopped.

My life will no longer be weighed deep in my blood,
the road will no longer slip away from my weary feet.
New time now shines in my fading eyes:
it will consume me, and dwell with my heart.
And all shall be full at the last, and left for thought’s delight.

I will open out my song and I know its smallest sound,
I will open out my song intent on the whole of your life,
my song possessed by the Event so simple and clear,
which begins in every man, visibly there, yet secret.

In me it was made flesh, was revealed in song with grace,
and came to many, and in them found its own space.