Strange is the path of life.
Before us is the twinkling
beckoning star.
Behind us
prostrate shadows—
dark, light
fiery, icy.
In vain we seek the stars,
never
will we reach them all.
In vain slink after us
the shadows,
never slinking past, and never to be caught
being only shadows—
only their rustling can we feel.
And in us is born
a yearning
for that which was
and that which will be.
And all our lives
are one
unceasing
trembling of yearning.
For the present
is just one entity
past with future.
The future—it’s our
fancied silhouette.
The past – it’s the palace of dreams
of that which lives in our
consciousness.
We yearn, but in that yearning
the meandering is wayward.
Sometimes
it leans toward the past,
and at that time we
want to hold all our past in our palms—
as if to stop
to reverse
time’s gallop, if only to live
with that, which was.
Sometimes
lost in the future’s breadth,
we wander
through its expanses—
we’d thrive
if we could reach that which
only in our dreams’ dreams
lurks and smiles.
And we thirst
to grasp it, to connect with it,
at once to hold it within.
We’d hurl a footbridge,
we’d devise spans
if only the past would link with the future.
Impossible.
Death’s high threshold
prevents it.
Thus remains only the present—
the trembling line between
the points of death and birth.
But we want
to see only birth,
to be unacquainted with death,
we’d like to conquer the past,
to banish her from consciousness.
We’d like
for only the future to exist,
strewing miracles,
and the present,
to be an incarnate dream
so that no one would die.
Impossible.
Every glimpse
of reality dies,
all that is left is totality’s shadow
in our consciousness.
At least our yearnings, dreamings,
imaginings nurture that
which we want
The world of
myths, stories, cults
beguiles the brilliant
where their longings abide.
It seems to us, that there is
a corner in space—
a Mountain Side,
a Hill of Paradise—
where there is no death,
where there is only birth.
and eternal life.
And at dying
we bid our dreams
to escape death:
Part, fire,
into two halves,
open the gates
to Heaven’s Hill! But that is just our dreams dreaming
that only would it be so.
And now, in real life?
The soul leaves the body,
the body rots.
It’s queer to us and painful,
and we pursue
the vanishing form of life, the melting glances.
And so is born
a deep deep longing—Little Earth, little blossom,
where will I plant the rose twig?
On the high hill,
by the seas, by the shores.
From the rose shoot
will grow a great tree,
branches high as the clouds.
I will climb to the clouds on those rose branches.
And I met a young boy
on God’s charger.
O little boy, little rider,
did you behold your papa,
your mama?
Little girl, my young one,
Go to the Mountain Side—
there is your papa, mama.
