Canto 1

     The dusky wood of middle earth I trod,
Alone, afraid, afraid of fear, alone;
Confused about the trail that led beyond,
Because the trail had turned so often past.
My company the fallen leaves, the shells
Of souls who'd trod the shadows on before
And left no track, nor thread of cloth, to call
Beyond the wooded maze of columns dark;
A guidepost on the way, however meek,
Assurance of a kind to say, "Now here!"

     Alone, alone, alas, alone! I paused,
To seek and find some meaning for this quest
I had without assent been sent upon,
Without an explanation or a goal;
Go forth! Go forth! was what no man had said;
Go forth!  Go forth! until at last you're done --
But tell them nothing, ask them nothing, or
The way you've not been shown will not be there.

     Wind, oh, I tell you arctic wind three months
Past wild farewells of geese cannot near reach
To water searching eyes, to chill the bone
Like these, time's winds, that whistled, wailed and moaned
About the trees in that dark place I found
Me on that night -- a scream choked off before
It left the throat, a death that simply passed
Unnoticed before birth -- those chilling winds
Around me as I trembled there, alone.
How, tell me how, came I unto this place
When all my charts had courses otherwize,
When these my eyes sought lands of warmth and grace,
When never had my gaze dropped from the prize?

The sun had risen long and far away,
above a place of warmth and safety found;
A gift of waters full of love of life,
A treasury of simple springs and fresh.
Life trusted, felt, beloved, wonderful;
The shadows summer secrets made of dreams.
The paths led over miracles and wound
To secret castles made of leaves of grass,
To misty autumn days where summer yawned
'neath quilts made by old women's wrinkled hands.
Protected then from winter, safely slept
The shadows made of dreams oer which I walked
Away from hearth, a stranger in the land,
Without a backward thought upon my mind.

Besotted beasts now waited by my road,
their slitted eyes unwilling to see truth.
Atop the hoards that would one day be mine,
They bloated sat befogged with draughts of wine.
Unmoved by beauty but to just possess,
Unwilling to give up what they knew not,
They surely fell before me in my mind,
In agonizing death upon my sword --
A just dessert for fools who had grown old,
And too long at the table, dinner cold,
Had sat and lost the courage to be bold.

 But wait young man, bestride thy fallen foe,
Thy gloating heart is no more simply cleansed
By silly deeds along your journey's way
Than lies by lies or foolishness by  fools.
No crows are scared or scarred, no crops are saved
By men of straw we nail to crosses there,
Though legions of them march nowhere along
The rows of corn or beans, their gestures wind.
Their warnings, fool, are in your mind alone
and fail to jar the purposes of one --
                       Of even just a single hungry bird.

     Look how upon the shoulders they will sit,
And peck the straw hat's brim, and laughing there
At whimsy's champion, enjoy a port
For thieves! a Caribbean pirate's cove!
Best to have fed the straw to your starved horse
And ridden down the stalks, inviting crows
To share the banquet of the waste, as well.

 But, men are like the seasons, true to form,
Each one discovering the wheel as new,
Each one without the sense of geese to leave
The wastes to wheeling bitterness of tears,
Will cry that only that which he has seen
Is clear, and just his road can show the way.
And, just the pain he suffered, worthy pay.
A circle, then, of sightless men; ahead
Of one, behind another, nowhere bound,
But each believing he is in the lead.

So, like you all, I quested dragons there
In places dark with fern and high crevasse
And oily slough and shifting sanded mass.
Brave tunes I sang on wondrous wandering airs,
Twixt towers square, I echoed there the sounds
That just had drifted clear from other rounds
Of other men, and thought them fine and fresh.

I ate the flesh of life, a gourmand's meal,
And noticed not at all the holidays
Like sand descending with a faster pace
Beneath the lighter bank of Time in store.
She came, she went, she came, she went, like tides
Upon a strand of empty sand; she had
Dark hair at first, and girlish ways, she had
The laughter of wind chimes; and then she had
A tall and willowy, lithe form, like streams
Of autumn mist that seek a distant morn.
I never knew her, who she really was;
I hid from her as much as she from me.
We talked a while, our meanings hidden deep
Beneath the coverlets of waking sleep.
And, then set off upon our lonely paths,
In quest of answers neither wished to find.

The sand fell faster, then, and faster still,
like water on the paddles of a wheel
It spun the years past in a quickened blur.
I saw the dusky wood draw near, but yet
Looked still away, believing I would not
Come to its shadowed folds in many days;
But, when I glanced behind to see the slain
Beasts in my wake, I saw the fringe of wood
                                        Behind!
 

                            Canto 2

there is a poet
sitting in the fall sun in the square,
watching the people pass
on their way to somewhere
or nowhere
or both.

he wonders why all seasons
lead to fall,
and why long shadows stretch,
and wrinkled,  fallen memories skitter
across
the autumn square
of his soul.

it is not that long
since he was young;
the mountains haven’t formed
and dissolved like clouds!
it has not been that long.
it just has not been that long.

the answers are shadows.
the visible absence of light;
insubstantial, changing and changeless permanence.
they do not die
when the thing whose shape they have taken dies
because they never lived the way
it lived.

shadows,
shapeless when the light is not there,
and not there
when the light is at its zenith there,
await
another sun, streetlight or candle there,
then spring to almost life.

the poet quests for words,
waits for idea's sun to throw
shadows of thought across
the empty autumn square
that is his page.
 

                            Canto 3

The old lady, who has a name
the child can't remember,
often sits on the screened back porch,
looking at her dead garden.

The child recalls her son.
He watched him once,
Plant something there.
He was slender and sunny
and had a quick smile
and his sailor's cap
sat at a jaunty angle
on his golden head.

But, he had gone away to war
whatever that was,
and his ship had been sunk
by a Japanese submarine,
whatever that was.
And now the old lady
just sat and stared
At the sunny sailor
who was not
in her dead garden.
 

                            Canto 4

     A star, a billion boiling fusion explosions,
The greatest power in the tactile universe,
Has no permanent power over shadows.

     Their unheard laughter mocks megatons,
Their judo using the power of their opponent against him,
Bending like a sleepy willow in Apollo's flood,
Then standing straight again.

      They seem to disappear when the sun is overhead,
But the poet in the square knows they are there,
Somewhere, waiting, resting, dreaming.

     He knows that they are fertilized by afternoon and
Watered by evening, and so blossom at night, spreading
Like drops of rain into pools and rivers, then oceans,
Drowning one half the planet until they are dried up,
And driven back by morning.

     Their midnight, he knows, is his noon.
     Their summer, his winter.
     And he wonders that he cannot feel anything, at all.
 

                            Canto 5

             The fin,
A quarter of a crescent moon,
Seemed out of place
In the flexible trough
Between the waves.

             The seal,
Whirling joyously in the surf,
Didn't seem to know
The shark was there--
Strolling uninterestedly
Towards him.

              Death
Is not acceptable
When it is casual.
Even the boy
Knew that.

              He yelled
A warning to the seal,
And the seal
Stopped in mid-roll
To look at the boy.

              Muskrat fathers
Will eat their children
As the boy's father had eaten him
(Though dead was eating him still),
But this was not
Casually done.

              The boy
Had been food for the father's
Starving, angry terror ...
But there was no anger here
And, the seal
Lost a great casual
Slab of its side,
Yelped piteously
And began to roll again,
This time not in joy
But in death.

              The roll
Looked much the same,
Except that it sent
Fountains of blood
In all directions
While the shark
Swam in casual,
Uninterested circles
Around the death.
 

                            Canto 6

     To run from death while running toward it,
To squander minutes a year at a time.
To love one's reflection in the mirror of another,
To exhaust the bank account of breath with
Foolishly deep draughts of polluted air.
To sing the wrong songs, to right the wrong wrongs.

     Young man, where are you going?
The suit is cheap, but your body is slim,
And you have shallow dreams worth money to people
Who can use them to make money
To pay for shallow dreams.

     The men you know are young like you,
And know what you know as surely as you.
They believe as surely as you,
And are as wrong as you.

     But there are false dragons to slay,
False prophets to follow on false paths;
A false world to conquer and upon which
You can superimpose yourself.

     Now sit in taverns and dream of successes.
Sit in boardrooms and plan them.
Sit in offices and make images out of words,
Images that will convince other lost souls to buy
What other lost souls have to sell.

     Ride your jet steed to great cities,
Selling, selling, selling, selling, until
A day comes when you have no idea where you are.
When a day comes that you have no idea who you are.

     Then, either die the death of keeping on
Or shed your cheap suit and briefcase
And defy all that you have believed,
All that you have done.

     Now, drive a strange road in quiet confusion,
Aware that your body is weakening, and your eyes.
Try to see clearly with the eyes of the soul,
Undistorted by the bottom of a whiskey glass.
Try to learn how to see with different eyes.

     Look around -- they are dying!
These men are no longer young,
Their dreams are, astonishingly, even older.
Around you, younger men with the same ideas,
Thinking them new, are rushing to
Fill their empty cheap suits and briefcases.

     Should you tell the younger men?
Do you have the ability to communicate
Images so strong, so clear that your years
Will pass through their brains like images on film?

     Or should you simply pull over to the side
Of the road and wave them on by?
 

                     Canto last:

     A cold front leaves the North Pacific,
Each cloud weighing twenty tons or more.
Softly, silently slamming into the Canadian Rockies,
The mass of moisture slides upward,
And in the cold air, precipitates.

     One droplet, crystallized into a snowflake,
Whirls like a tiny frozen carousel
By Tiffany spun from Olympic strands,
Descending to a rocky canyon.
With millions of its brothers, it waits as
Millions of its brothers fall, and
Compress into continents of ice.

     The geese fly north, dragging the sun behind them.
The face of the glacier becomes slimy, liquified.
Rivulets dribble into a Canadian gully,
And join the rivulets of a thousand other gullies
And become a great river that flows past old gardens ...

     Where boys watch old women
     Who stare at memories;
     Past urban canyons where young men
     Dream dreams they think are new;
                           and now ---
     By an autumnal square littered with leaves,
     Where a poet writes shadows
     On parchment made of floral death.

      A list of life soon scattered
      By the wind that is made of time
      Across the banquet of the waste.

(exeunt)

© 2002 Larry Leonard