spring
when Hellenic beauty fades and she becomes the hag
that wanders down meandering roads the winding
course obscures its twisting distance and its end is sightless
i must pay the dues of age and greet and kiss her cheek
and tell her of her loveliness today and know
that this may be so when years were young and beauty was in spring
she doffs her cogan bowl and asks me in her dream
"Please my boy find the covered well
and bring me water if but a thimble drop, beetle backed, but clear"
"Where may i find this old well old girl" i asked
beyond the hill there is a small tangled copse she points
and in its midst beside the wild apple
the thatched turf a dome upon secreted truths that left by
wormcast fall into a well whose mossy walls disguise the
odour and the clarity of watery deeps
and whose echoes ring beneath the subterranean soils
like roots beckon far out to eternity
the bracken growing round its eyes
furled before the power of heavens nebula
its guards and sentinels
the leaven rocks below its gourds
"lower down my bowl cradled in this net
and do not look upon the water
for in its whiteness there is age refracted
and its aqueous limbs are creased with tiny rivulets
like the lays and lines that rule my face
which i presume to think should not be inherited
before their consequence is due"
"why would that be" i wondered
and though no word was spoken so she answered
"wisdom must be won"
and though the journey seemed so short
it took a lifetime
and as she drank the bowl so the colour returned to her lips
and she sprang young like a flower from the earth
a veil of beauty and of merriment
gorgeous she kissed me and later gorgeous she lay
strewn with apple blossom petals and the heady scent of turf
and of bracken
for they bowed and spoke her name
and through their multitude she spoke
"let them wail upon my memory and tear their blood
and anguish in their hearts like ripping muscles scream
for life has passed through me as nothing but a journey
and in the end i am alone among its winding pastures
or its dense humanity
a tree that braves the heights upon a mountain
sees more knows more endures more
for i am but an aged henge of bone and weathered gristle
mortal frail upon the path that leads from spring and well
and as the wind does surely blow upon the mountain top
so i guess the hills will crumble and the roots of trees will warp
and man will be but the dust of an instant
in the fabled mountains of the morn"