Two Sights, and the Lessons They Taught Me

Upon a time, not so long ago I saw these things, and locked them away In the treasure room of my memory: One sunset, Apocalyptic in its brilliance; Clouds of opal shimmering, Flying across a sapphire sea. The white ruins of an ancient city. Once home to a great and proud people, Streets long settled into the silence Of years marked off by dust, My footprints in that dust. And just beneath these things I felt another something Immense, Unnamable That lies far below our common perceptions Like water flowing beneath thick ice. The knowledge of its prescence, Felt only in those fragile moments When images too beautiful for the frailty of words Burn their way into the depths of our souls, Has given me that sound I hear now in silence A clear bell that sounds a tone Not made by any instrument of Man, Which stills the frantic revolutions of my reasonings And gives me back the pure sight I had long ago Before my childhood disappeared. In fleeting impressions Falling through the tempest of experience That carries us all through life, I sense this other side of the world, The calm, steady eye That holds fast in the center of the cyclonic round Of Creation and Destruction That drives the Universe along: The unmoving Hub At the center of the infinite wheel. Sometimes I feel this faraway place Lying nearer than my latest breath, Standing firm somewhere beyond all confusion, And island of strength beyond all substance Surrounded by the seas of our doubts. I touch it with my mind, in flashing moments And it is enough To bring some peace to the wars of my emotions, To steady my hands as I guide my life Towards its unseeable end, Uncertain and dim in the approaching distance.