| From the book The Wild Rose | Legends and Fantasies
(1976 - 1978) |  |
| Journey of the magi | I
He who has ridden so long and so far,
waking and going to sleep again, and being dreamed
as a small life, melting on the tongue
and penetrating us, like a last sweet,
like an open tie
from the line on the hand
to the star in the broadest river of the heavens,
II
he knows how the aim diminishes on the journey
and a gathering together of priceless omens grows
as the scattered light runs with the sand,
over the narrow way in the clock of darkness
and the visions of a thousand years
run from the chest
like air and wait before:
III
or a certain book in the coloured dark,
and there is darkness indeed, but it’s comfortable for the eyes
as if the vision, fallen together with the beam,
finally grew up, strengthening in the dark
and shining,
runs over the old letters,
as over the festive candles on a thick tree;
IV
or the winter steppe appeared to be
a curtained bedroom of dark mirrors,
where scarlet fever hovers over a child’s anguish
so that the eyes could search out the lamp in the west
like a crystal,
fractured in tears and coloured.
They sit at their night work by the light of the lamp;
V
or as though raising its face from over the page
the matter opened out to them all the wilfulness:
the clear, visionary stones with an immortal pupil
lit the underground trunk of the tree –
so that everyone could read
of their wish –
but there was no secret, no joy in it.
VI
There was only silence and the endless journey.
The rummaged through chest of minerals and stars
had long ago bored them to death. Like a face without a face
the end staring them in the face tormented them:
as though not having found the ring
in a mass of rings
they were going away now, surrounded with their end.
VII
“O how the heart yearns, what a disaster!
You who laid the fire, like a thing among things,
why did you call me and are looking here?
I am not the best of many in Your abyss!
Have mercy
on this poor life. Have mercy
that it never loved itself,
and that the star
carries us, carries like water...”
VIII
So they were there, where they always wanted to be. | | Richard McKane | |
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