Ode to a Thank You: Psalms

By Ioannis E. M. Vassos

This book contains 245 psalms and a prayer and is dedicated with the deserved love to my parents, ELIAS I. VASSOS and MARIA N. TSIAKALOU, as well as to the Holy Mother Superior and the Belgian nuns, assistant nurses at the hospital in Hasselt on 21.11.1963, the date of my birth. There were my first friends who looked after me when I was born, and I may not be able to meet them ever again. But through these psalms, they certainly met, my sincere respect, with their unlimited kindness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jan 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909884342

Book preview

benevolence.

INTRODUCTION

The arbitrariness of the acts of my life melted away

clashing with my soul

in the blaze of your infinitude

and my tears seemed abashed

in face of the well-grounded indictments of the eternal life

for they resembled desperate souls

of wearied dreams

And then, my friendships were reborn

along with my scant virtues

and thus they managed to teach

the breath of light to the darkness

the liquid splendor of my speculative tears, Lord

I repudiated the mediocrity of matter

I repudiated the mediocrity of man, the eternal disciple

I craved now

to offer to my spirit

only true knowledge

awarded by the beauty of the Divine.

For I, being a terrestrial friend of angels,

craved also, I, the Human present,

to meet angels

again and again, Lord.

ODE TO A THANK YOU

1. For Thou have shattered the senseless desires

of the arrogant victory of my passions, the pleasure guardians.

2. For Thou have guided the sense of my discipling ears

to associate with glorious words.

3. For Thou have preached to my heart

the courage of kindness which Thou have appelated LOVE.

4. Lord has accepted the disgrace of my form and has forgiven it.

5. The ignorant on Divinity pronounced God is

where the dominant zero loves to reside,

and the archetypal zero said to the zero,

nothing exists apart from

the desire of my human maker.

6. Shelter me Lord, in the hospitality

of Thy selflessness which is Thy truth.

Hide me in the paradises of the movement

of Thy ever all vigilant

starguarded eyes.

7. Lord, forgive those, with the totality of Thy grace

Lord, punish those, with the honesty

that always proceeds from the advice of Thy love.

8. Lord, save me from the robber, carrying

his ignorance on the misfortunes of meanness,

from the plundering instructor of impunity

who transforms truth which was grateful

to life, when it tamed wisdom into a senseless lie.

9. My soul is deliberately leading my feelings to the Lord

my body is serving with the prudence of piety

the desire of my soul,

abandoned to the submission to the Divine.

10. Oh Haven, Thou modifier and master of the divine changes in my life,

the holy desires of the virtues, make them crave, in our favour,

Thy truths.

11. Lord, I have shored within me the birth of love for Thy Truths

and now Thy Temple has become a crib to warm up the three builders

mind, body and my soul, following me loyally

and preserving