Here is the first part of a sequence of poems which I wrote twenty or so...(More)

Here is the first part of a sequence of poems which I wrote twenty or so years ago. I did not know of their existence until a few days ago when I found them on an old cassette tape. It might be their miraculous appearance that makes me fond, but they sound like some of the best things I have done. The recording is around two decades old also - before my voice became hoarse with old age! Archaic at least two thousand years he stares into the camera lens as that one gazed into the nighttime sky from a scented terrace in Babylon. Tigris and Euphrates interflow, like images of now and then, here is the human god we understand. From the east, the dawnland, the place of the rising sun, beginnings smoulder, shatter in resolve porticoes and trumpets, sleeved white gowns. The Questioner knows my name and nature the other part of being asks to know; and in the stillness, softness, in the silence, peace, coming together after all these years. Yes, there is a mystery beyond the scope of rationality and I should love it even if it lied. Never had I seen one such nor thought to touch the voyager from far beyond the stars. You are a fellow spirit brother mine, unborn and totally benign. I salute the essence seen through you. Age shall wither and custom stale; but far beyond the present time a star shows me what you are and where you are and it shall never falter or grow pale. It burns upon an ever active core continually. Now, and ever after, and before, in the time where time begins and has its end, here seal the contact, call me friend not lover. Inevitably love must have an end but friendship has no period or date is not too soon or late, but always now. Here swear the bond and seal the vow not with blood but life, the being pure, the incandescent essence turns to flame and then into our beings once again where we are separate and yet the same. The longing is not appeased, can never be; were we but one the ecstacy would fade; only in separation can we thrive, know ourselves as one, but stay apart. Thus he came to me, will always come, the feeling that in him I am at home even though I drift through space and time; a god I do not know, the self I cannot name, are one and both the same, one and both the same for ever more, who find in separation sweetest love. No, it is only the light upon the wall and the slim ankle and the whitest muslin, the line of the jaw beneath the skin demanding that you stroke it, that you smooth it. And if the lips be ready, here upon the cushions where the scented breeze blows across from the gardens, let us pass a Cairene afternoon sipping coffee and a sweet liqueur. Tell him he is welcome in his coming tell him that the centuries stand still; whisper the name of one for so long absent, hear the echo in the inner chamber. We waited for the changing but the bright light faded into a deeper magic and in the evening consummation just before the rising of the moon we heard the woman crying in the courtyard. The kind old gentleman falls from heaven, compassion broods upon a murdered cat; the host of angels fades into the cosmos; we are left in the silence to ourselves, our hands are opened, emptied of its treasure desecrated temple of the senses, abandoned sacrifice, all delight departed, here we are with nothing but our bodies. The mood recurs and emptiness returns, again the anguished emptiness returns. Never mind, the flesh that moves so subtly now accepts the burden of the boundless, the mind imagines gods that never lived. Here I have infinity's gleaming temple the light that passes on the whitewashed wall, against it leans perfected nature's beauty, the form that took millennia to make, more precious than a thousand rich men's fortunes. Here in the silence of the misted morning, here in the dawning's desolation. Into the fiery heart of matter, through blackness into living light; across the thin unending spaces swirled into a vortex, plunged in the ceaseless, mysterious atom. Matter is itself the living secret, the unviolated godhead of our being, that which is born, and that which gives it birth, the parent and the child in one. Unimaginable the depth of being which is an everyday occurance, the miracle is all around us, the mystery is at our fingertips. Created creator, what can you know of your creature? The worshipper is one with the living god. What if the door should open on the sea, confront us with the wild waste suddenly? What if we saw the visionary whale? If we corrupt and delve while sunlight floods the floor darkness waits beyond the door. Late afternoon confusion sweeps the morning's certainty away, leaves us to the evening's mercy at the close of day, followed by a wakeful sleep.(Less)