Six years ago
I walked up a mysterious, tree-lined stony track,
flanked by rivers worn deep
and slate worn out, iron-grey and blood-brown;
the rock revealing the age of the earth
trees and rivers revealing its youth.
Higher I walked - alone I went
ascending into the silent world, full of flies not silent
sun shafted through pines and ash, moss on bark,
lichen furred live stones and more runlets
coming down from who knows where? crossing
and edging the stony track ahead.
And finally - the round place:
magical and as throbbing as any ring of stones,
The Destination.
A circle of tree, nowhere to go to, silence and the flies.
Somehow, a rite of passage happened -
hot, quiet, buzzing, lonely and astounding.

And now I stand in the same place,
and I feel like I'm hallucinating; wiped away, it is - smeared
now a metalled road for timber merchants leads up
through barren slopes like barrow mounds, until
it reaches a destination which is no destination
tyre torn mud circle, a gate, further off fields
but here
a scene from the Great War
tree Somme.
Desolate - magic hides deep under the earth
until its time come again
sic transit gloria mundi
I mourn
but I remember

© 2000 Dharmachari Padmavyuha

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