Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Dudes in the Nunnery?

Juan Ramon Jimenez is a Nobel laureate, awarded the prize in 1956, from Spain. As can be suspected by anyone artistic from Spain (Buñuel, I'm looking at you), there is a problem with the Catholic Church. In this situation, Jimenez wrote a series of poems about a love affair he had while being taken care of by nuns of the Holy Rosary congregation. As a nun's only love is supposed to be with God, it is only but assumed that the nuns have asked for these poems to be silenced.

While I understand the nuns need for the poems to be silenced, they are actually pretty good. The Guardian published one of them. It is called Three Verses:

Sister! We stripped off our ardent bodies

In endless and senseless profusion....

It was autumn and the sun - don't you remember?

Added sweet sadness to the white splendour of our abode

Sister Pilar, are your eyes still so black?

And your mouth so fresh and red?

And your breasts...? How are they?

Oh, do you recall how you would come into my room late at night, calling to me like a mother, telling me off like a child?

"When she fled, in a flight of deranged wimples,

from the impetuous will of my desire

she would seek shelter in a corner, like a cat ...

but her nails were sweeter than my kisses.

I'm with Jimenez on this one, but I'm OK with judgments being passed against the Catholic Church. That one doesn't bother my protestant self too much.