Ole Farmers Journey On (For Leighton Salmon)

For all the Sphynx and Pyramids of their days These that towered beyond Babel before me Straightening the old gordian knot of our maze Have too been swallowed by the unseen eternity For all our might like sand dunes have stood Satrapy of indelible caprice and wind With force of sword we make our wisdom good But know not the ends, since we fresh begin To die the first hour of our birth and dream We passed over the earth a frolicking stream. How then this pain despite the old expectation This fear of time that grips in a conveyor's belt Hurrying my thoughts to conclusion, and extinction To all the scaffolds of my certainty? I have felt Before this same emptiness of meaning This useless spawning and yearn for more Light somewhere too at base is crumbling Matter is vanity, vanity is matter, nothing more So I'll take my farewell now of them and of dream While clinging to the game, a pawn in the scheme Go ole farmers, go on, where men go and none return I'll save my heart for invisible things of faith It's all the same to the glowing worm, the fires still burn However pale the distant echo from the gate I declined from academia marbled halls Still leave a whitened bone behind the flow Not every river into mighty cataracts falls And some from rain, and some from snow Yet every rill had sparkled sometime, and every mist Unbound us from the mass and haste that so insist.