Saint Julian Press
Kevin McGRATH ~ Poet
W I N D W A R D
N I N E T E
E
N
T
RAVELLERS
can never return
To places of perfection,
And those who go weeping
A cup of mere grain within
Their unbarred private heart,
Endued, they are, one day with
Smooth fields of green wheat.
Such is times mobility
The various bones of a skull,
Where three expressions tell us
Of deaths weightless threshold,
Its broad white gateway
Guarded by two patrolling swans.
First, a weakening of strength
A creaking of the vessel as
Sinew and illusion relent,
Then the weariness of loving
Always surrendering our souls
Knowing we cannot be met,
And finally the quiet admission
That we cannot lightly triumph
That victory too is one day closed.
Ineptitude of mindless youth
Struggles of maturity and
Stillness come of slow age,
And yet more durable than these
Or any stone or hard element
More firm than even old songs:
Paradise is always open
Always turned toward us,
Waiting in the near distance
Both immediate and remote,
In the ideas we must perfect
Ideals that reveal those doors
Made pure by being invisible.
Paradise receives our bodies
The useless breath we spoke
Telling of inconsequence,
Even for the unclothed lovers
Apprehensive with their bias,
The beauty of joined nakedness
And those simple words.
Only travellers tread paradise
For if we never move our ways
We are not transformed,
In the transit of a human soul
Is more than the world can
found
,
More than even gravity which
Supplies our sensory wealth:
The grasses and the leaves
The timber for our voyages
Children of the future
And how we tell them of our kind,
Liberal fields we might describe
Where white birds stand guard
And the journey has no motive.
Buddhaghosa Visits Suvarna Bhumi, Myanmar, 19th C., photo credit, Lilian Handlin.
BURMA STUDIES FOUNDATION