In poems I record my passage across the trackless wastes
of night, where I receive such startling clarity –
as if the milky way were opened to invite me in,
and I, a child, enter Aladdin’s cave
where I am shown great wonders of the spirit that will not fit
into the two-dimensional suitcases
which language offers to convey experiences to others.
Noone knows I'm here or where I've been.
I feel a kinship with the madder Hebrew prophets, who dwelt
in deserts and lived on locusts and wild honey –
fierce and uncouth as they were, their inner ear was ever open.
So it was with early English hermits,
whose springside cells invited angels by their energy.
I do not know what all of this is ‘for’,
and yet I feel it charging some kind of cosmic battery.
In the silence of each vivid night
my voice projects across the void of time in ways it never
could with ideas tethered to modern age.
It's as if my task’s to walk the arc that travels outward
from our human certainties towards
divine uncertainty, where pregnant gods suspend the rules
and magic’s in the air. This glorious dance of
spirits, tho optically invisible, is joined by sacred
attunement to the subtle vibrations of light and joy.
It is a plane above the sphere of compromise that’s ruled
by non-materialistic reason, where
the laws of love create those self-refreshing structures which
in-form justice and truth and inner knowledge.
How easy in the night to know: how hard by day to do –
where perfect lines of thought must bend round others.
Voice is to audience, as language /image is to common sense:
melody to listeners, as genre to social tribe.
My task appears to be to smuggle out the sense I have of this
ultra-real world of spirit truth,
that it may flow like water where it will, and nourish those
who do not dam its purpose or dynamic.
The spirit speaks to all, but those with ears to hear are rare –
for most prefer to hear from human guides.
And so I make my mark on stones and trees with ill-formed tools,
not knowing whether what they signify
to me will have the same (or any) meaning to another.
Matching means to ends is a lifetime’s task.
How easy it would be if I were not constrained to bring
something of these precious gifts away with me.
In giving what I can to whom I may, I form another
of night, where I receive such startling clarity –
as if the milky way were opened to invite me in,
and I, a child, enter Aladdin’s cave
where I am shown great wonders of the spirit that will not fit
into the two-dimensional suitcases
which language offers to convey experiences to others.
Noone knows I'm here or where I've been.
I feel a kinship with the madder Hebrew prophets, who dwelt
in deserts and lived on locusts and wild honey –
fierce and uncouth as they were, their inner ear was ever open.
So it was with early English hermits,
whose springside cells invited angels by their energy.
I do not know what all of this is ‘for’,
and yet I feel it charging some kind of cosmic battery.
In the silence of each vivid night
my voice projects across the void of time in ways it never
could with ideas tethered to modern age.
It's as if my task’s to walk the arc that travels outward
from our human certainties towards
divine uncertainty, where pregnant gods suspend the rules
and magic’s in the air. This glorious dance of
spirits, tho optically invisible, is joined by sacred
attunement to the subtle vibrations of light and joy.
It is a plane above the sphere of compromise that’s ruled
by non-materialistic reason, where
the laws of love create those self-refreshing structures which
in-form justice and truth and inner knowledge.
How easy in the night to know: how hard by day to do –
where perfect lines of thought must bend round others.
Voice is to audience, as language /image is to common sense:
melody to listeners, as genre to social tribe.
My task appears to be to smuggle out the sense I have of this
ultra-real world of spirit truth,
that it may flow like water where it will, and nourish those
who do not dam its purpose or dynamic.
The spirit speaks to all, but those with ears to hear are rare –
for most prefer to hear from human guides.
And so I make my mark on stones and trees with ill-formed tools,
not knowing whether what they signify
to me will have the same (or any) meaning to another.
Matching means to ends is a lifetime’s task.
How easy it would be if I were not constrained to bring
something of these precious gifts away with me.
In giving what I can to whom I may, I form another
link in the chain that stretches back to godhead.
