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| From the book Elegies | | (1987-2004) |  |
| The Beginning | In the olden days, when sowers and herders
inhabited the earth, and white flocks,
plentiful like the waters,
were scattered over the hills
and at evening hugged
the warm shores –
before the people, who had never yet beheld
anything like the face of Medusa,
abusive,
murderous,
after which,
like a stone to the bottom,
they go to the end –
before the people, above the vastness of space
freer than a wave on the sea
(for land is generally freer: permanence
breathes more deeply and evenly and doesn’t weight itself down)
so, in the vault of Heaven whose figures were still unknown,
unnamed, and therefore burned as they willed
before the people
down heavenʼs ladder
above the vastness of space
above the harkening hills which kept their eyes
on it,
on the first star,
out of the overflowing cup of the night
rising on a suspended ladder –
it suddenly appeared:
the light uttering like a voice
but infinitely more briefly
the same syllables:
Fear not, my child!
Thereʼs nothing to fear:
I am with thee.
F.D. Reeve | |
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| | |  | | The Beginning |
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