John of the Cross
The Pursuit of Love
Translated from the Spanish by Martha Sprackland
For love I leapt up on my quest
on wings not lacking hope,
so high I flew, so high, then stooped
upon my waiting prey at last.
I was the hawk in fast pursuit
and flew to snatch Him from the sky,
and urged my soul to soar so high
I dwindled distant from my sight.
I climbed the steep and winding air
and soon began to faint and tire
but love drove me ever higher
until I spied my quarry there.
Higher into dizzying blue
I went, eyes dazzled, blown adrift
and made my awesome conquest
under veil of darkness true.
But as this chase was all for love
I blindly sprang into the dark
to trace my high and breathless arc
and saw and seized my prey above.
The higher skies I summited
in falcon love’s sublime crusade
the lower and more grave
my humble spirit plummeted.
Who could reach it, I cried out
as my soul fell lower, lower,
but still I flew high heaven over
until my quarry there I found.
Strange, that this one flight by dark
should hold more than a thousand,
for the dearest hope of heaven
will never fail to hit its mark.
The hope that set me on this quest
sped true the arrow of my flight
so I could fly so high, so high
to clasp and take my prey at last.
John of the Cross was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic poet and Carmelite friar, canonized in 1726.
Martha Sprackland is an editor, writer, and translator from Spanish. A second collection will be published in 2027.