Vladimir Truhlar, God's Colorful Paths

Vladimir Truhlar (1912 - 1977) was a Slovenian Jesuit theologian. He wrote most of his works in the 1960s and 1970s, and was especially important for his reflections on the Catholic Aggiornamento. Besides being one of the most important (if not the most important) Slovenian modernist theologian of the 20th century, with a crucial influence in the liberalisation of Slovenian Catholic thought in the 1960s and 1970s, he was also a poet. This aspect of his work is less known. In the past decades, his poems were rediscovered and many of them published for the first time. Virtually all of them are of religious nature, many have mystical elements. This is one of my favorite ones, entitled "God's Colorful Paths":

Since I have recognized

you within myself,

I can see

you coming towards me

from the external world, as well,

approaching me

from everywhere:

through the little orange birds on

Paul Klee’s paintings,

through dark red

rebellions,

through bread,

through Graham Green,

through the immaculateness

of sharks.

***

Pisana pota Boga

Odkar sem Te v sebi

prepoznal,

vidim:

tudi od zunaj,

od vsepovsod,

mi prihajaš nasproti:

po citronastih ptičkah

Paula Kleeja,

po uporih 

v rjavordečem,

po kruhu,

Grahamu Greenu,

po brezmadežnosti

morskih psov.