RINGED MOON
Moonlight falls distant and dry,
Frosting the snowfields in lustre;
Trees shudder darkly and sigh,
And, to win warmth, seem to cluster
Where the dog howls to the sky.
Life has locked and barred her portals
On the death-skis of immortals.
Moonlight falls distant and dry,
Silvering the homesteads to sadness;
Trees shudder darkly and sigh;
Cares of the world and its madness
Rise with the howls to the sky.
Life has locked and barred her portals
On the death-skis of immortals.
Moonlight falls distant and dry;
Ice-blinded window-panes glisten;
Trees shudder darkly and sigh.
Why do you strain so to listen
When the dog howls to the sky?
Life has locked and barred her portals
On the death-skis of immortals.
MY ISLAND
Still I keep sailing and sailing,
And seeking an isle in the sea:
I have sought it long already
Where the random winds sail free.
The sea has many islands
And havens expectant with light,
But I cannot find the island
I dreamed in the dazzled night.
And still my vessel keeps scudding
On a swaying circular plain,
And the clouds above me go swaying,
And I seek my island in vain.
TROUBLED THOUGHTS IN ENDLESS MOTION
Troubled thoughts in endless motion
Swarm like traffic in commotion,
Give me neither rest nor respite.
My dear friend was like a brother,
Stauncher far than any other:
He was as my alter ego.
But, alas, he left the byways,
Hastened down the sweeping highways,
In his heart the seats of power.
My own path remains the narrow
Track through fen and over barrow
And my goal a waiting homestead.
Troubled thoughts in endless motion
Swarm like traffic in commotion;
My dear friend was like a brother.
UNDER QUIVERING ASPENS
I am walking under quivering aspen-trees,
I am walking with silent thoughts of glamour,
Weary of reading famous visionaries.
The sun is setting saga-crimson beyond the burning line of woods:
I see it with sore and fevered vision.
Then come gusts of subsiding evening breezes
That stir the aspens.
Over the mown leas gusts from the Land of Winds
Still scutter at times in the tops of the aspens.
Over the mown leas haymakers in the languor of evening
Plod homewards, passing between hanging birches.
My spirit in its frail body, quickened by the Land of Winds,
Longs to communicate itself to kindred life.
I salute you, aspens, my brothers, my sisters.
I am walking under quivering aspen-trees,
Mute, absorbed, with the steps of an exile.
Take me into your quivering, aspens.
© ELM no 16, spring 2003
