We are love’s body, or we are undone

I mentioned yesterday that I'd blip my favourite poem from Nan Shepherd's only collection - thus the pictured 1934 volume (reprinted for the first time in 2014) ...

... and the poem I've chosen is the closing verse:


Real Presence

Clear as the endless ecstasy of stars
That mount for ever on an intense air;
Or running pools, of water cold and rare,
In chiselled gorges deep amid the scaurs,
So still, the bright dawn were their best device,
Yet like a thought that has no end they flow;
Or Venus, when her white unearthly glow
Sharpens like awe on skies as green as ice:

To such a clearness love is come at last,
Not disembodied, transubstantiate,
But substance and its essence now are one;
And love informs, yet is the form create.
No false gods now, the images o’ercast,
We are love’s body, or we are undone.

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Nan Shepherd (1893-1981)

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