I Entered Where I Did Not Know

I Entered Where I Did Not Know

I entered where I did not know,

And there remained, unknowing,

All reason now transcended.

I did not know the door

But when I found the way,

Unknowing where I was,

I learned unheard of things,

But what I heard I cannot say,

For I remained unknowing,

All reason now transcended.

My knowledge was fulfilled

With serenity and peace.

In deepest solitude

I found the narrow way:

A secret giving such release

That I was left there stammering

All reason now transcended.

I was so fully drunk,

So dazed and far away,

My senses were released

From feelings of my own.

My mind had found a surer way

A knowledge of unknowing,

All reason now transcended.

And he who does arrive,

Collapses as in sleep;

For all he knew before

Now seems of little worth,

And so his knowledge grows so deep

That he remains unknowing,

All reason now transcended.

The higher he ascends,

The darker is the wood;

It is the shadowy cloud

That clarified the night,

And so the one who understood

Remains at last unknowing

All reason now transcended.

The knowledge by unknowing

Is such a soaring force

That scholars argue long

But never leave the ground.

Their reason always fails the source:

To understand unknowing,

All reason now transcended.

This knowledge is supreme

And meets a blazing height,

Though formal reason tries,

It crumbles in the dark.

For one who would control the night,

By knowledge of unknowing

He will have all transcended.

This is my final word.

The highest learning leads

To an ecstatic feeling

Of the most holy Being;

And from his mercy comes his deed:

To make one stay unknowing,

All reason not transcended.

--St. John of the Cross

This poem can be found in both Spanish and English in Spanish Poetry:  A Dual Language Anthology, 16th-20th Centuries, Ed. Angel Flores; Trans. Willis Barnstone.  Dover, 1998.
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