ROCKS

I have walked through cities, gardens and oases.
I have suffered through births, struggles and passions.
I have pulsated with the beat of the storms.
I have thrown my life open like a womb.
I have sung and sorrowed; I have dreamt and fought.
Every nerve of me has been scarred and blessed.


I face now the desert and the rocks.
They burn with sun. They fever with light.
They are bare and solemn, live with rattling death.
They tower, yet have no scorn.
Though no sound comes from their tortured peace,
with poignancy and love they speak.
Oh, these words they utter
they burn through, they hollow, they soothe.
They are open like eyes
and closed like tombs.
They are fragrant with heat.
They are dull and sullen and my heart wilts
before the grandeur of their silences.


Take me, loveless rocks, into your sepulchre
that lives and surges with passion greater
than all the lusciousness of oases.
Take me who have become your peer in barrenness,
whom life has stunned into ecstatic death.
Oh! take me that am but a mortal
and fain would partake of your agelessness!


I have walked through cities, gardens and horizons.
I have suffered through births, loves and the end of love.
Let me rest in you with the peace of stone,
that I too might dream endless dreams,
cold by night, burning by day –
dreams strong and old,
foundations of new earths.



ULTIMATE STANCE

I.

I have captured the mighty sun
within my armor, formed and strong
. I knew his glamor, his dazzling;
and I rose above his golden lure.
I sacrifice unto my star
through nights consecrated and clear
where my heart encompasses
the wholeness of crystalline space.


Through the seried months of the year
my earth revolved around the sun
compelled by his insistent might;
and the wholeness of me was spread
over long weeks of wandering.
But now in my own self I stand,
my soul riveted to the Star
round which centered and firm I move,
whole within the span of the day.


And in the uttermost alone,
secure within my high gates,
where neither earth nor sun ever
have power to scatter my self
through long revolving day and year,
there, at last, I am that I am,
indivisible and constant,
a pin-point of eternity.



23.

Now comes the moment of Soul.
Years have passed
of search, of contingencies,
of hopes and still-born deeds.
It has been a good fight, clean and fair.
Now, as if death were near,
I stand facing the wall that may open,
strong at heart, ready for the confrontation.
I may fall
yet am not afraid of failure.
I may win
yet court no victory.
I have but one aim:
to fulfill my destiny
whatever the means, whatever the fruits,
whatever the path.
I contemplate the past from which I emerged:
my record.
Nothing seems useless now,
nothing wasted, nothing that could be otherwise.
Satisfaction?
This would be meaningless.
There is never "enough";
but what is
IS.
To that I assent.


Utter calmness, indifference even.
It does not matter. It is not "matter".
It is not one thing or the other.
It is I, that am all.
For this minute I am all,
because poised in destiny,
unified in destiny,
a uniqueness which is Allness,
a void transparent to fullness.


It is all there.
It matters not that I cannot spell the names.
When all names are told at once,
they become meaningless;
they become power.
Because I am power that is total,
I desire nothing.
How could I?
To desire
is to admit lack of power.
But to him that is power as destiny,
death is open.
He marches into it
towards the Soul.


I am marching on, my friends,
into my space and my silence.
It is as if I were all open,
open like an ever-receding sky.
It is so quiet
I can sense the heart beats
of multitudes of destinies.
I am poised in all destinies.