and I seem to be always saying, “farewell,
you may not know me, but hear this:
like all the rest, I love.”
And if all this is only death
and around me is only hell,
I’ll still be kneeling before those knees,
still won’t release my gaze.
And if I am to go on,
and close my eyes, forget my words,
unclench the hands of the mind,
that cloak will speak instead of me,
like my own blood inside.
And though I’ll lie—don’t interrupt:
for I know where I’m bound,
I know my hands are red with blood
and my heart lies underground.
But the light that was my very light,
and carried the third light high,
was the life of me, was the truth of me
and was more me than I.
SECOND INTRODUCTION
Where someone walks, someone looks
and thinks about him.
This look is open like a hollow
where a candle burns and waters flow
over a home that stands within.
Yet whoever decides that he’s alone
in truth knows nothing at all,
he’s not his own lord and master,
we’ll speak of him no more.
But it is strange how a deed
sinks into the depths below
and there it lives like Lancelot
watching time pass overhead—
a wave rolling low.
I know not who has confused me,
or whose guilt I carry within,
but life is short, but life, my friend,
is a gift of glass that falls from the hand,
and death is long, like everything now,
and death is long, so long.
Ahead of it lies only water
and I am sorry a thousand times
that death must keep going on and on,
as though it weren’t the horizon.
And joy comes up to its waist
and sorrow is ankle-high.
And when I fall asleep it is
my own voice that I hear:
“a single candle in your hand,
beloved, hold it near.”
A single candle in her hand,
and downward it is turned,
as if both had raised their gaze
and passed without a word.
THIRD INTRODUCTION
A northern harp one last time
I shall take into my hands
and I’ll kiss farewell, farewell
to that blind old music.
How I used to love that tune,
that light in love with the dark.
And nothing will end with itself,
as you once said to me—
not with evil, poison or slander,
or a wound of the heart’s surrender,
not even death so young and tender
crossing above itself
two saplings in full bloom.
Dark is your storytelling,
yet it suddenly flares so bright
like a thousand colorful jewels
on a thousand slender hands,
and you see there’s no one here:
and you see there is only light.
So let us ask that we may too
stay on here like light.
That we may build a house from tears
for everything we had to do
and remember day and night.
Go now, may the Lord be with you,
and eat your bread, your earthly path—
which leads I know not where, but away.
And night draws in behind you
a meadow colorful and heavy.
And if fate deals out to us
its most unlucky star,
the wind bloweth wherever it wills,
and we live wherever we are.
1. KNIGHTS RIDE TO THE TOURNAMENT
And so there can be times,
and such a time can be
when you sense the earth’s heartbeat
and the smoke trailing thin—
the greenwood’s earthy heartbeat
and glory’s smoke so thin.
And the rest will hide away
behind a bush and a tree.
See the riders—how like the sun they are,
their horses made of the dark,
hoof and spear of a child’s hurt,
and their shields of mystery.
They hurry to meet their Pentecost,
their holy day, their feast,
where death will fall like one young rose
upon an open breast.
Do you remember that same rose
looking in at us?
We try to hide our eyes away,
yet still it’s looking in.
And the one who died young and loved,
and having loved himself,
walked and all that was ahead of him,
he touched and turned to living gold—
like Midas, only happier.
And now he is everywhere
and he is that very dream
that the hillside sees and horizon sees,
all those skies that are bright like him
and glorified like him.
Now life is overgrown,
the forests are too dense,
and speech is hard and it’s hard for me