If you would seek wisdom,
the walls of your prison
must be made a prism.
To purify vision,
let light begin creeping
like mice, softly sneaking,
almost still half sleeping –
if wisdom you’re seeking.
03 MAY 2017
Leave a CommentTake heart, ye wayworn pilgrims
on the road to finding out,
who’ve braved the elements of fear,
delusion, pride and doubt,
and found on your long journey
not a sole epiphany
except that destinations often
are illusory.
Take heart, ye lovesick paramours
who thirst for the divine,
whose knees are raw from crawling
through the realm of Proserpine;
what horrors in the realm of Death
you’ve suffered for your lust
are merely shadows, palimpsest
that will crumble to dust.
Take heart, ye hopeless wanderers
who think there is no trail
and have forsaken long ago
some great quest for the Grail.
The cup is in your hands already;
Drink, and have your fill.
If you can’t find it there by now,
you likely never will.
10 May 2005
Leave a CommentFor forty years I’ve sought some kind of truth
and come up empty-handed, more or less.
What dreams I held like treasures in my youth
have lost their gleam; my hands, their tenderness.
The journey has not gone as I had planned,
nor have the self-prescribed instructions been much good.
The waters beyond my small plot of land
remain uncharted depths, and what sparse food
I gleaned from these great oceans has become
like horded manna, fit for only flies;
my touch has turned rare jewels to lumps of coal.
My tongue once loose with song has been struck dumb,
anesthetized by years of speaking lies.
Now, even my illusions cannot hold.
Along the rocky shore, I peer in vain
out in the mist that crowds the twilight shore
with eyes now worn and weak, their muscle strained
from nights in candlelight. There is no more
soft music in the wind that brings delight,
nor quiet silence where I find some peace.
Each moment brings no end, just fruitless fight;
and sleep, once fitful, brings me no release.
At midnight, when the world is calm and still
and secrets are exchanged between the veils,
I stand offstage, behind the curtain’s wall
and where the footlight shadows barely spill,
just listening to others’ wondrous tales,
and realize I’ve found nothing at all.
27 JAN 2005
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