A Poem Written By My Grandfather

Beginnings


The past is gone, the future hasn't come,
the present slips away: do we depend
on nothing? Nothing answers, for it is dumb
and nothing has no beginning and no end.
For the time has come when the suffering of the root
becomes the root of suffering and the tree
of wisdom, bare of its customary fruit,
loses its image of abundancy.

And the time has come when the reason for desire
is tempered and the desire for reason
explodes from ashes into continuous fire
of light and heat against the severe season,
and in the meditation of the flame,
beyond the one sensation that it warms,
we perceive the function of its dancing game
and recognize the clarity of its forms;

until the time has come when the change of light
yields to the light of change, music of space
played in the half dark of an elusive night
of alternate despair and silent grace,
seeming to drown the time when the rest of being
ends and being at rest suddenly draws near,
when the sight of birds vanishes and the bird of seeing
flies away somewhere else, away from here.

From: Moving the Seasons by Charles Guenther