away across a meadow
finding something only there in a thicket he took stairs down
to where an old man sitting in clumps of weeds, rocked and sang of dead things, though smiling,
and it was so the many days he footed the heights and remembered
just how it is.
The boy took it his great mission to find the what it was that brought him here
the man was no mold, was not some chance formation of limestone or an excrement of the bats, so
he plied him with questions, so that he would exhort the dozens-dreaming memories he�d made upon himself.
the boy spoke to the wizened one, reckoning surprise:
�what brings you here to feast with vermints, fists upon no cloth or pages, wishes locked on wishes, to sing away alone?
In the sundering of lids the trace orbs set, and from the shadows a cadence bore:
When it was, I had search for the riddles, where to be seated. When it was I learned the codas of the cold. When it was I found the riddle, brought myself to this soon rest!
When only, to seat upon the dark, in the darkness I alone am there, within without around, it all tastes of stick and will not change.
When with, the darkness even is another, I�m no still thing, a thirst was born within me to carry me to what?
When another, would I find, I was calm upon my searching, this my final rest and so I snapped upon illusion.
Here I stopped to glance the water, bathing there it held me empty, I seeming only it myself, reflecting I in it in I looking for what we two reflected.
When I moved to find the riddle, what was bathing, what reflected, made my way upon the road.
Where was glass, the open, empty, light-engorged and distance ever,ever
Then I found it darkness only, and the light, and I, I only
When I took the road to further, into heights and over, over,
When I came upon the green, a richness growing, dreaming for the light I still escaped
When I came upon the water wishing life to dream.
When I came upon the earth, resting on the dark I�d stepped from
Where was lying something surely, I could curl upon and name.
When I rested, gathered empty into passages of flame
When I gathered, curled and dillated
on the hope of a thing for hearts and eyes))
where I saw a single stone, a marble polished from the water, rolling, rolling in the pathway, over others, knowing nither, polished, scoured beneath the weather.
Followed, followed, wondering, winded, hoped to know how it minded
when it stopped it sank or tinkered, I held it , wondered, sank and slept.
Where I looked the light was over, over dark, the dark unmoving, in the darkness, soothing, soothing, was a riddle, though it went
around the light it went, it lept, and I poor one, took after.
where I looked was color, laughter, walls and wells and sky, the jester
sun was set to dim that inner limnus of the grave
where I looked where I looked looked after, after
what I looked from, ringing, ringing. When I moved, it faster, faster
moved upon my destination.
Within, without, I brooded, broke�between us, but silence spoke
the quiet of the fisheries, the moving sky, the recesses, all marked their own
place between two suns.
My only answer, answering, seemed hard and blanched and caved...
Along the path a dreamer dreaming
children too upon the black
I chose to follow over in
back into my own cave.
Advent VII: The Old Man