Who are the dead
I have not reached
(or been unable to find)
who wait with such patience
in quiet corners of my mind?
Seek with the mind
you get thoughts.
Seek with the heart
you get understanding.
Speak with thoughts
you reach a man’s mind.
Speak with understanding
you reach his heart.
.
Who dances not
knows not
what
is done.
Even Indra
turns his back
upon the sun.
The many lose
their hunger
in the fullness
of the One.
The One loses
oneness
in the hunger
of the many.
.
Entendu! Understood!
One cannot step
into the same river twice.
Fresh waters
are eternally
rushing in.
Who passed this way?
And when?
Wait!
Pond river ocean
all are filled
with eternal waters.
In tasting these,
is Liberation not found?
And yet the ancient Dragon sits
in a dried out rock pool
singing for rain!
She has burned her lover’s letters.
Will her lover’s tears suffice?
And the river is jealous,
resentful of bridges,
imprisoned in pipes
and drainage systems.
Even Neptune rages
with his trident
against the volcano
slyly plotting
under the seabed;
impotently chokes
with pollution,
hungry and overfished.
The gods themselves
have traded eternity
for the ticking of a cosmic clock
which crawls its way
towards the end of the kalpa.
For an alms bowl
of memories.
.
The fountain
reaches upwards into space
and, finding nothing
to sustain it there,
falls back into its proper place.
And in this endless
rise and fall,
we see the start and finish
of us all.
Time flies
through summer and through wintry skies;
measures elephants and butterflies,
marks where this is born and that one dies.
See the world dissolve and fade before your dying eyes!
.
In the Jungle of the World
and the tangle of the Senses
we build us huts
of mud and heartache
and make (and mend) our fragile fences.
“This is ME! This is MINE!”
is the burden of our song.
We cannot see, still less define,
that pain and sorrow prove us wrong.
This is NOT mine, this is NOT me,
is the beginning of our Sanity.
Letting go of what does not concern us
leaves that alone which,
meddled with, will burn us.
The Law is mirror-like in its precision
and its simplicity needs no revision;
that Good breeds Good
and Evil has its price;
that Virtue is its own reward.
And so is Vice.
That all things pass away,
from butterflies to stars,
and though the World’s a prison
it’s the Mind that makes the bars.
.
We raised our hats to you, Mr Lincoln.
We believed every word that you said.
And when life spilled into darkness
in a night of theatre,
we believed, even though you were dead.
From the decay that was Europe, we sent you our sons
to escape from a thousand-year prison called home;
from money and serfdom and warfare and guns;
from Ireland and Germany, Russia and Rome.
We believed, Mr Lincoln. We knew. We could wait.
From the slave-fields of Africa, we heard all men are equal
and America, like God, would apply it that way.
And having applied it, would insist on the sequel;
that all men were free in this African day.
From Asia, the bent backs of our human machines
learned of machines that would give them their rest;
learned they could stand straight and what freedom means;
and, holding heads high, put it all to the test.
And what did we get from all the bright promise?
And what did we learn when we gave you our vote?
From a heap of dead redskins to a pile of dead commies,
you could write the Lord’s Prayer on a used five-buck note.
.
There are those who want Peace
and Peace is attainable.
There are those who want Power
and Power may, or may not, be attainable.
There are those who want Power
in order to be peaceful.
That is not attainable.
Freedom from
can be freedom from Freedom to.
But Freedom to
cannot lead to Freedom from.
.
How glad I am
that I am here
and not somewhere else.
(If I were
somewhere else,
I’d be here.)
No escape, then!
.
Delivered from the Cross
with all the authority
of the Saviour of the World
at the precise moment
of his people’s rejection of Him.
“Forgive them Lord
for they know not
what they do!”
And within forty years
it came to pass.
Their Temple destroyed.
Their Holy of Holies
trampled on by Titus.
Their sacred paraphernalia looted.
The consecrated foundations
of their city ploughed over.
A million killed during the siege
and 97,000 captured and enslaved.
A Roman coin was minted
showing a Jewish woman
in chains under a palm tree.
When the Romans
built a replacement city,
His people alone
were denied entrance.
Homeless,
they wandered the earth,
gaining hard won prosperity,
followed by expulsion
from every place
they settled in.
Finally,
after two millennia of statelessness,
and six million who died
in a Final Solution,
a plot of land was carved for them
among the cosmopolitan
humanity of Palestine.
And they were settled in the midst
of their most ancient enemies.
Proud, but unrepentant,
to fulfil their Saviour’s curse:
Forgive them Lord
for they know not
what they do.
And it could have been worse.
.
When you throw yourself
down from the top of high mountains,
the Earth does not take you
into her arms
and comfort you.
When you kneel
and kiss the ground,
the Earth does not praise
your humility.
It is for this reason
that she is called
‘The Great Mother’.
Every moment
is a fork in the road.
And every fork
is always the same:
the choice between right and wrong.
The wrong is always
arrogating to oneself
things which do not belong
to oneself.
The right is always
following the Light.
.
CENTRE Poems 