To be read aloud to: .youtube.com/watch?v=WHPEKLQID4U
I
Of course the swirling tide
With slow revolutions of its wheels
Twas ever thus Frailty
Watch the bubbles on your coffee
There will inevitably be days when
The front door is open
The strange man turned up again
A bowie knife between his teeth
I was surprised to see he had red hair
They kept him in the hut
The sum of the shadows
The camera could not do justice
Only when they started to dig
They heard cries for help
I felt their roots with my hands
To be asked about the same things
Had taken solemn counsel
A man is coming back
The king is not yet deposed
She showed him the golden child
II
How to go on in life
As if one's life were a radiant light
Covering his blind eye
In the dream he finds himself
And the unconscious answers
The bear called after him
He was nonetheless free
The very fact that someone imagines
I felt their roots with my hands
To be asked about the same things
Had taken solemn counsel
A man is coming back
With sort of a half smile
No one in the world knew
It wasn't even raining
All through my childhood
The secret heart or depth
The last room in the long corridor
Deep levels of sorrow
A real problem for me
As I found my teachers
A direct transfer of thoughts
The experience happened some years before
The first important dream comes
At the dentist's office for a filling
After a time he met a raven
To speak to him in song
(I could find an illustration
This is illustrated fairly well)
The world we are living in now
I had begun to feel relaxed Then
Somebody was playing music
Someone read that poem
That is where it should belong
There are many ways to remember
This knowledge is crucial
This strange feeling of knowing
I have come I have reached you
Entered the boat and crossed the stream
That's what my dream taught me
It's just that so many people have so little
His message overflowed out of the wires
His seemingly spontaneous detour
This god did not make our ancestors
Slogans chalked up on the walls
I used to be a jazz musician
The solution lies here
I didn't hear the teacher's words
(The uninitiated create insane things)
One evening I sat down
Like I'd almost had a visitation
She spoke to me in song
Turning bullets into jewelry
Already sitting in my hut
Women kneeling as they wove
To rebuild the World House
Reading the news on the radio
What went on behind the barbed wire
The birds and pigs were silent
Where the land was abandoned
III
A hundred pounds of sea salt
The fragrance of flowers
Another day with a dozen babies
All the work was purposeful
There are things to do first
Something more enduring
Violet-green swallows preening
What happened -- really happened
Take the rose
He touched and was touched
Finally we arrived
There were pink gladiolas
I used to be a jazz musician
I tell them the story
I know a world when I see one
Where bags of skulls are stored
The story I don't know
We put up orange cones
She was bearing bad news
The prisoner stands before the judge
I watch and witness their presence
Rain in the north
The elders murmured ascent
Now all that has changed
More and more nations are seeking
I tremble with courage
She scrutinized the trees
Landmarks had disappeared
IV
I remember thinking how beautiful
By design or coincidence
But I felt sorry I don't know why
We were all more or less in love
I can remember too
Into this tense situation
He went over in a corner by himself
He went home and spent a sleepless night
It was not easy to come to an understanding
A headless angel stands
We walk a dirt path
Drawn back into the memory
To truly understand ceremony
I have made a decision
No one spoke of it
Thus it is with art
Books used:
Ulysses J Joyce
Shadow and Evil in Fairytales M-L von Franz
Life after Life R Moody
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar M Prechtel
Tiananmen Diary Salisbury
Thief of Tales SA O'Hungerdell
Finding Beauty in a Broken World T T Williams
In a Dark Time Lifton
And a Voice to Sing With Joan Baez
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi Fischer
A Fire in the Mind Stephen / Robin Larsen
The Moorings of Starting Out J Ashberry
