The First: The Sun Darkening Because the Soul- and Angel-Sun, clear light of heaven, the very God-self radiance, shrouds itself in cloud, it’s only fitting my sorrowing beams must also hide. Who would not, when God suffers, suffer too? They are unworthy of my rays who view Him undisturbed. This darkness-terror wakens a new Mercy-Sun, whose heat and flash my ardor and favor cannot match. No foggy air nor cloud can interrupt that shining. Ah, I simply cannot watch the Source of my life die, or hear the noble mouth that spoke me into being, sigh. I’d rather, for this Light of Light, choose my own dimming. Oh, you blind people, see the gruesome horror of your sin whose dark iniquity will darken God’s illumination. Out of extreme extremity shines out the sun of your salvation.
This translation is published in Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (CMU Press, 2023). Click here to read the sonnet in the original German.