PART I AZIMUTH
They rise immortal, assembled in bright array;
spanning the heavens in endless tiers,
although, among them some may have been
dead for many a thousand or million years,
they return faithfully treading the Cosmic
Causeways.
And, even if long burned out in black isolation,
in their season they steer us toward limitless
horizons.
CHORUS
“Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, darkness will cover the earth and
deep darkness the peoples; But the Lord will
rise upon you and His glory will appear upon
you. Nations will come to your light, and kings
to the brightness of your rising.”
Isaiah 60:1-3
Guardians of the doors and gateways
of our sleeping and waking dreams,
they shine down on us who dwell
in their cast-off light.
Immutable, unattainable, utterly empty
they reign over times and seasons;
and we in turn are meaningless in their sight.
Except by their return, upon their steady path
traversing what otherwise would be
a black and waste filled track,
the Sun in its blue exigency would alone
rule our thoughts, even when withdrawn
beyond sight on the fading horizon.
Without these sojourners to knit together
the jeweled patterns of our dark nights
our dreams would never wander into the
farthest Heavens.
No path leads here, where I stand
beneath the lanterns of Heaven.
No landmark is established.
No bedded road leading
to any definitive end,
whether commerce, or exchange,
to serviceable material or mineral,
to timber, or precious artifacts.
Here is no Warroad winding out
towards tribute or plunder.
And what has lead here is indefinable,
a search, not for anything lost,
but for something missing.
Surrounded by cataracts and shadows,
this, the dwelling place of wind,
of whispers and volitions,
and alchemies beyond
our capability to harness.
Here one arrives at powers
that flow past and through
our temporal human imprint.
Wisdom emerges here
at the edges of desolation,
in the unknowable black tangled terrain
of higher reaches, in wilderness where
the mind with its tenuous grip must sustain
the body beyond its natural limits,
pressing on with inner resolve,
bracing against erosive elemental forces
gathered at the precipice.
Here laws govern forms, movements,
energies, allowing the soul
to reach into silence,
to find the stillness of the mind,
to begin to listen intently,
not to its own sound or speculations,
but to that which lies beyond it,
seeking passage out of its recursive
toroidal circuitry,
into another iteration invisibly
binding together all things
that have proceeded out of
the originating fire:
Harmony, Proportion, Magnitude,
emerging before the expansion
into space and time, established before
a single thing was fashioned.
Then, emerging from the first matter:
Extension, Distance, Mass, and Velocity,
waves pulsing out into the universe,
still sounding within every living cell,
The Word, moving through voids and pools
of dust and gas,
driving the contending principles
of change and invariance-
still pounding within every living soul,
Word Immortal that formed the chords
of connectedness in all things.
Nearer to us laws decree the whiteness
of snow, the bending crescent line
between earth and sky,
pervading intractable solitudes
in which we house our deepest desires.
In the closedness of our experience,
we have grasped little and mistaken much,
that which moves in the heavens
for that which is motionless,
that which gives its own light
for that which mirrors another,
that which is not for that which is,
and that which is everywhere
for that which is not found anywhere.
Seeking immutable patterns
We have devalued the essential character
of nature, which is to vary,
and with it the essential stamp
of our own nature,
which is impermanence,
to gather in life for a time, then,
in due course, to freely letting it go.
This we have denied in our souls,
and have rejected death, and have denied
our true nature, taking hold of our lives
as if immortal,
entertaining deceptions leading
to all manner of evil.
What is truly unchanging lies
in the domain of spirit,
to which we also belong,
but cannot possess
by force of will.
Yet, despite knowing this,-
that life is a gift
to be surrendered,
to our last breath we seek solace
in matter-bound cycles,
familiar rhythms, the season’s renewal
out of seeming death.
And towards these ends
that sustain us only temporally,
we will lift still beating hearts,
torn from gaping chests,
up to the luminous spheres
imploring their stipulated return.
We have not understood;
we play at infinite games
with a mortal perspective
calculating only our own gains,
meanwhile , as we fade in this world,
we forfeit the greater glories
and the higher arts.
Realize, our silver sun rises and sinks
on planes other than our own,
and this earth may eclipse the sun
in the sky on another world’s horizon,
and our deeds may shape
unforeseen outcomes in clandestine perviews.
“For when you are at the center within you, and
I in mine, we shall be as one.”
-Crazy Horse.