Love Has Seven Names - Hadewijch

Love has seven names.

Do you know what they are?

Rope, Light, Fire, Coal

make up its domain.

The others, also good,

more modest but alive:

Dew, Hell, the Living Water.

I name them here (for they

are in the Scriptures),

explaining every sign

for virtue and form.

I tell the truth in signs.

Love appears every day

for one who offers love.

That wisdom is enough.

Love is a Rope, for it ties

and holds us in its yoke.

It can do all, nothing snaps it.

You who love must know.

The meaning of Light

is known to those who

offer gifts of love,

approved or condemned.

The Scripture tell us

the symbol of Coal:

the one sublime gift

God gives the intimate soul.

Under the name of Fire, luck,

bad luck, joy or no joy,

consumes. We are seized

by the same heat from both.

When everything is burnt

in its own violence, the Dew,

coming like a breeze, pauses

and brings the good.

Living Water (its sixth name)

flows and ebbs

as my love grows

and disappears from sight.

Hell (I feel its torture)

damns, covering the world.

Nothing escapes. No one has grace

to see a way out.

Take care, you who wish

to deal with names

for love. Behind their sweetness

and wrath, nothing endures.

Nothing but wounds and kisses.

Though love appears far off,

you will move into its depth.

---

Hadewijch (13th century) The Netherlands

Translated by Willis Barnstone and Elene Kolb

Source: Poetry Chaikhana