Between Which We Walk

Merrivale January 2009

Let us go then, you and I *
Down these many corridors of stone,
Open to the winter stillness,
A thaw in motion, somnambulant in mood.
I have seen all things pass and all men go
Under the shadow of Tara's Halls,
Misting on the drifting leaf.

Listen! The rocks and trees are whispering,
And slowly, very slowly,
Like a world caught in breath we wait to exhale.
Caught between the present and future,
At the height of expectation,
Exhilaration is the moment
Of sweet release.

I have heard you calling, Dalua, Dalua!
Arise from your dreams on Mount Amara **
And walk with me, tripping down the nights and days,
Mind and muse, moving together,
A marriage of true minds
Intoxicating one another,
Drinking from that conjugal cup.

And in the eternal landscape of the here and now,
In the post-glacial history,
Lies an archive in the granite schist.
Layer upon layer of stored fable and fact,
Between which we walk, between the stones,
Over the pebbles, over the grit,
Touching the quivering branches, the soft luxuriant mosses.

Come, let us navigate through this inner landscape Polyhymnia,
You are my guide,
Tread carefully across the boulders,
Across the skeletal track,
Across the Earth's sweet cleavages.
And we, who are each of us upon the last and sharpest height,  ***
Feel the air is thin and oblivion not far away.

VH 2009

* TS Eliot

** Milton

*** Tennyson