Of clouds and pilgrims (April, part 2)

Reminds me of a Brazilian poet called Cecilia Meirelles, whose themes often revolve around being in time for a brief moment and heading into not being. She sings because the moment exists, she says, and never gives too much thought to her own finitude, although she is aware of it. Here, nimbleness and grace are the answer to overcoming time, and as she draws on pictures of clouds and stars and the depths of the sea, she identifies spontaneously with these images of eternity. In her feminine, medieval song universe, endlessness is like the gardens and springs which she sees resurrected at the opening of a bottle of perfume: airy, light, free, irresistible. These ideas are all central to her book "Viagem" (Voyage).
How different the world of the psalmist in Psalm 39! As we see a man broken down by his own mistakes and flaws, he desperately tries and reaches out, no longer able to refrain from speaking. His anguish is fire, and it makes his tongue sing. God is fire, and He makes the singer sing. It is then that the psalmist seeks relief from his own fallen person into the idea of eternity and the person of YHWH.
He is a pilgrim, he says. Someone who is destined to be seen but for a limited section in time. Relief is granted, because imperfection will certainly cease, consumed by its own burning urge to sing. Perfection, on the other hand, is eternal and merciful. This pilgrim longs to see his ending and no longer bee looked upon by the self-existant YHWH. He seeks God's knowledge of manly mortality, but not God's accusations. This knowledge is the passive, contemplative one of the philosopher, and not the active designation of the judge who points out. The knowledge of relief, the knowledge of the one who turns away from the object of his knowing.
From fire the pilgrim sings and asks for the vision of his end. Once God removes from him the outer aspect of his burden by turning away His compassionate but inspector gaze, the pilgrim will even be able to breathe.