Valdkaap
(From the Kotraban)
I stand before these city gates
Shrouded in bright dust,
Where hand-set ramparts (becoming sand)
Squat defiant for a moment.
Grim men scan the plain
From towers rising for an instant:
Here are but partitions--
I have seen bastions.
Along the narrow tracks,
Through trees as old as dawn,
There are no bars to wanderers
Who are ever coming home.
Over the crisp white and the spike green
It is stars who keep the watch;
Where stone climbs to greater spires
Grander walls have grown.
Above the walks of my youth--
Enclosing there within
All that has touched my heart--
A true fortress stands.
Untitled
(from the Kotraban)
I have long dwelt among vast moutains
And known the dark of close grown trees
Then stepped into the light beyond the timberline
To feel the sun through the thin cloudless air
I have long walked down soft pathways
And smelled the evergreen around me
The tread upon dark fallen leaves
To the rocks and grass of high meadows
I have long climbed above the village
And felt the silence of the forest
Then gone beyond its quiet haven
To the open world of the mountain top
I lived then a child of hights
Seeking relief from an emptiness
A seeming unbearable weight
Hoping to leave it upon some height
And known the soaring power of the waves
Then walked along the sand's edge
To hunt after an un-named need
I have long waited nights by the fire
And heard the thunder-waves throwing logs
Then gone alone at first light
To see the waste of seeming order
I have long hurried toward new sights
And travelled dusty roads along
Then stopped at bright dawn or hazy dusk
To find myself yet un-arriving
Now long will I dwell with you
Having found in an instant
All for which I hungered--here
Among the vast porticos of the heart.
