From: The Ruins of Athens (cont.)

Overture

I don't even know who you are, But I love you.

I cried a thousand tears,

but they ran down my mountains of trouble

and became clear cold freshets gurgling their way

     into the ravines and valleys of peace ‑

     into meadows of wildflowers and raspberries they poured;

their purity and vitality fed and watered those meadows

and I lost myself in memories of secret places ‑

in lands of mountains and mysteries ‑ of flashing waters

     and simmering ponds, of shimmering horizons and –

We live with minds floating like corks upon the ocean.

‑ The Mind ‑ fish in a great sea, darting to and fro.

Already the dreaming had begun in a thousand-fold of domiciles ‑

In little patches of the earth we worked the law for good or ill.

We worked the mind ‑ the dream.  We began to till the soil;

To work the land from barren soil or rich loam;

we planted and cultivated the lush green…

[continued…]

The Uninhabited (God is Lonely)

I climb the mountain of aloneness.

I seek the desolate and uninhabited.

The Power is in the Mountain.

Here where only the wind sings to itself,

Here where the clouds roll in misty shadows

and coat the rocks with glazes of ice and snow;

those rocks like the Tombs of Genius,

solitary, motionless, a timeless testament

to the truth that "Only the Earth Remains".

Here, on the mountain ‑ all power lies.

I move like a silent witness along the winding

     pathway, across the ridge ‑

     across the Knife‑Edge staring desolately

into the gorge below ‑ 1000 feet or more of rock

falling sharply off like an abyss of hopelessness.

The sun shines only weakly through.

an opaque frosting of high clouds.

The lower clouds have obscured my vision

and all but the grotesque and bleak tableaus of stone

jut out from the peak of my mountain.

     I fall into the unknown,

     The known world is gone ‑ only a memory.

The unknown stands before me as an overwhelming

Monument to the Infinite Vastness of the Great Spirit.

He is strong on His Mountain.

He moves in breaths of chilling silence.

In flashes of gray and white,

In swirls of mists of vapor enveloping

my senses and thrusting me into ever reaching

            stretches of rocky climbs.

Up and down through a vista

both beautiful and desolate, both horrifying

 and awe‑inspiring in its solitude, its silence.

Here God is as He was before human life existed.

Here God is surely lonely.

The Great Spirit breathes his one‑million day breath in

and all is life and light -

He breathes out and all night descends.

Here, on His Mountain ‑

     God is Lonely....

     And then, "The Beautiful".

How it struck me ‑ Like a haunting vision

that would disturb my sleep ‑ for days and nights.

     And my song formed.  A song that surpassed the

childish emotions of happiness and sadness.

That went beyond the known, to the unknown.

Here where joy and sorrow mingle in the beautiful.

Here where the end and the beginning are one.

The Rivers of My Tears

I had traced the Rivers of my Tears

from those valleys of peace and contentment

where they flowed in the broad expanse of their maturity ‑

Done with the passions of exuberant youth and

the ignorance of resentment and rebellion.

There where they swept through my valley

of green farms and villages and sun and prosperity -

And all goodness of Life with man.

I traced them and followed them back

where they gained whitewater and tumbled

over the pass ‑ under the bridge ‑ along the

     mountain road.

Here in this North Country of my Youth

This Land of Pine Forests and Cold Mountain dells

I traced the Rivers of Tears as they wound their

way back up the Mountain of Loneliness and

became running streams and then rushing gorges of

crashing waters ‑ The Trail of the Falling Waters;

right back to the falls, the Flume.

Here where the Tears poured forth in the enthusiasm of

love spent and given, and yet finding no object.

Falling waters into an abyss of coolness

Further up beyond the immense rocks of difficulties

that tried in vain to thwart my stream of love,

But like water, my faith, my love, my joy parted

and swept around them.

Covering all troubles with its cooling swiftness.

In my childhood, my love was just

a trickling spring of contentment, high upon

the slopes of happiness; fed and nursed by the melting snows

of other winters of lives long since

fallen upon this mountain.

I trickled down through the years in such gurgling freshness

and purity, unaware of the turbulent journey before me.

Now I see it from my vista of manhood,

I stand and look beyond the final ridge

and there, where the first, (or is it the last?)

trickles and puddles of water seep forth

from the seemingly lifeless rocks of my aloneness.

Life yet pours forth and waters and feeds

the most basic and hardy of life ‑ green mosses and lichens;

a few low lying plants and yet among the

graying mass of rocky defeat there is a flower.

A small white flower with little red fruits.

Growing here as a promise of the continuity of Life and Love.

Here my River of Tears’ source is in the tiny

"Lake of the Clouds" ‑ Lying here as though

dropped like a Tear from the Eye of that Lonely God,

who hovers like a Great Spirit over my Mountain of Aloneness.

 For it was night when my vision ended.

 All the way down, as I worked my way back

 to the valley of habitation, out from the tombs of

 the past, the Tombs of Genius like those

 Great masses of Granite standing as sentinels to

 the passage of time (Like the Ruins of Athens).

 All the way down the Mountain of Aloneness,

 I heard birds singing

 that every end is just a new beginning.

 Follow the valley of your River of Tears that flow,

 For I know all things can come to me if like the river

 I flow on to the sea.

 And all things can come to you

 if you are true to the Heart that is True to You.

Postlude

            I don't even know who you are.  But I love you.

            I cried a million tears.  It was finished.

For they ran down my mountains of trouble and aloneness

and have again become the clear cold freshets,

gurgling their way into valleys of peace and contentment.

If the tears flow now, they flow as a River of Joy -

Flowing into meadows of raspberries and wildflowers

in purity and vitality, feeding a Joy of Life.

I lost myself in secret places,

     of mountains and mysteries --

     in flashing waters and shimmering horizons....

And though God is Lonely, God is One.

And nothing lives beyond the pale of His Love,

For all the way down the Mountain in Father Sky above,

I heard the birds of heaven singing....

"Every end is just a new beginning."

March 7, 1987, Michael A. Guy

c. 1987 michael a. guy, all rights reserved