When the great ones return
Raining magic from their wings,
Then only the white teeth
Of the concrete kings
Will glimmer
In the pool of death,
By the cool urn.
Nothing else will fall on the stone,
No one slain,
But only
The bitter echo
Of lies,
And even
The pot
Of tattered tales
Of yore,
All misbegot,
Will be shred
And gone.
Towers overturn
When the green waves rise,
Bearing the emerald throne,
Then the majesty of the deep,
Will cast off the oppressor,
And deliver
Creation
From its gray-nodding sleep,
Long bewitched in the chronicles of error.
Now the nimble goat
Slips her tethers,
To skip again on the grass-enchanted height
Beneath
The boundless skies,
At one with spirits of the living tide.
The throat
Of the lion of wisdom
Will rumble anew;
The rain
Of Indra will crash from
The chariot of thunder,
When the forests reawaken to reclaim the earth.
Nothing will be lost then,
Only the mirror of untruth
Will crack and shatter,
When wolves dance on the hillside,
There where tigers roam, growling
In the darkness;
Their bright
Eyes
Burn
Along the holy way of the night,
When spirits return
In the white magic of winter,
Triumphant,
On the howling
Winds of joy, in the songs of sunrise;
In victory, horses of snow
Sweep,
In stride,
Across the broad plain.
Leaving in their wake only the stillness
Of the lily of eternity
Waving in the sunlit rain,
For the truly living do not die,
But only the walking, dissonant dead,
What is will be
And what is not
Has never been;
The leaves are one with the eternal tree,
Where peacocks,
Two,
Watch intently in the blue
Mornings.
Beyond the rim of history,
The great winged mother
Shakes the dust of opals from
Her feathers,
Gathers
Her wanderlings,
The garbling geese
And their errant
Goslings,
The trees of twisted juniper,
The moon-radiant
Rocks,
And all her children,
Into her many-storied home of peace
By the green-banked river
In the haunting bells of dawn.
© Sharon St Joan, August, 2013
Photo: © Conorwaldock / Dreamstime.com