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”.

2. The source

The undulating wood slopes down
to the rhythm of mountain streams….
If you want to find the source,
you have to go up, against the current,
tear through, seek, don’t give up,
you know it must be somewhere here.
Where are you, source? Where are you, source?!

Silence….
Stream, stream in the wood,
tell me the secret of your beginning!

(Silence—why are you silent?
How carefully you have hidden the secret of your beginning).

Allow me to wet my lips
in spring water,
to feel its freshness,
reviving freshness.