To Heloise, Songs of Abelard - Texts by Judith Infante and Peter Abelard

I.  Abelard:  Confession, to Heloise
Text by Judith Infante

And so, to banish fearful anxiety and all uncertainties
from the heart within your breast, receive assurance from me…

 I confess you made night glorious day
and each dawn I left  your bed was dark falling.

I confess I was born to a first son’s claims,
but rejected the life of merely a man.

For I believed God’s mind to be
a crystal of logic, every syllogism

something of its core.  And even if
I opened a small window of thought,

I confess to blindess of prisms.  Lady, I am shamed
before Christendom and orphaned to the world.

I admit relentless pursuit of Lady Philosophy,
and I confess a false loyalty to you.

Because I mistook the nature of Truth,
before you I confess by ignorance.

But I spoke the truth to name you Helios, Sun.

A woman comes here to sit beside me.
She wears white linen and her face is yours.

I am finished with words, and confess
each day without you has been dark falling.

II.   Silence Perpetual
Text by Judith Infante

Silence
pen and voice still

body confined to a cell
one courtyard, one mass

silence
in the grand library

shifting of bars of light
slip hours across his desk

silence
through the sieve of his thought

flow grand names
their power like dreams

ideas lift and return to him
lift and repeat

his mind is a water wheel
turning in a dam 

into the silence
fall fragments of chant

at night fireflies drift
untouchable 

silence
the gift

© 2008 Judith Infante.  All Rights Reserved.  Used with permission.

III.  Chant: In Parasceve Domini
Text by Peter Abelard, a French scholastic philosopher and the greatest logician of the 12th century.

This Hymn was sung in the night office (Nocturns) of prayers
on the evening of Good Friday.

Solus ad victimam procedis, Domine.          Alone to sacrifice thou goest, Lord,
morti te offerens quam venis tollere:           Giving thyself to death whom thou has slain.
quid nos miserrimi possumus dicere                For us thy wretched folk is any word,
qui que commissimus scimus te luere?            Who knows that for our sins this is thy pain?

Nostra sunt. Domine, nostra sunt criminia:      For they are ours, O Lord, our deeds…
quid tua criminum facis supplicia?                  Why must thou suffer torture for our sin?
quibus sic compati fac nostra pectora.           Let our hearts suffer for thy passion, Lord,
ut vel compassion digna sit venia…                That sheer compassion may thy mercy win...