Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- The Voyage into Night
- 1 Ariel
- 2 The Serpent
- 3 The Hidden Continents
- 4 The Foundation
- 5 The Light of Darkness
- Selected diary entries for the period during the composition of The Quest for Gold
- Punishment for the Transgressors
- Symbols of Creation and Destruction
- Appendix Revised versions of two poems
- Platesection
Appendix - Revised versions of two poems
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- The Voyage into Night
- 1 Ariel
- 2 The Serpent
- 3 The Hidden Continents
- 4 The Foundation
- 5 The Light of Darkness
- Selected diary entries for the period during the composition of The Quest for Gold
- Punishment for the Transgressors
- Symbols of Creation and Destruction
- Appendix Revised versions of two poems
- Platesection
Summary
The Magic Mountain
I am not to be deceived
by the albino maiden
Who gave me her ring
in the knowledge of forms
as yet unformed
of nameless upwelling impulses
am not to be deceived
by the dry sky
over mountains
Nor by the stillness
its empty peace
Romantic poets and artists sought out such scenery
Regarding the mountains as
dwelling places of the spirit
Fixing ascendency to their peaks
Yearning to their uprising thrust
For the mountain has its awesome aspect
Communing with the material belly of earth
Rending down to twisted folds
of ravines and rockfalls
Where sudden movements spell danger
Where heroic gestures presage fall
Our hubris mocks shadowy places
Naming as myth the Elysian Fields and River Styx
the boatman and his accompanying hands
Would such ignorance have the face to laugh
in these matters?
Would it prove to be any preparation?
The corn tremors in the wind
Colours pulsate the fullness of flowers
in the meadow
Red bathes the river with the last
of many dying suns
The Voyage into Night
I came into this world as if in a dream
Hallucinating to the stars in the night
Dark visions of Our Lady
Holding the torch
It was frightening
To sense one's progression so
Voyaging into Night
In the dark
It is peopled by the merry-go-round kaleidoscope
Round and round go the vistas
Unfolding
A strange entertainment
To retire to between the sheets
One night came a twist
I was unreachable
Journeying alone
Sentient creature
Caught between good and evil
Their faces
Mocking my loneliness
The jerk into it
Comes suddenly
Think pleasant thoughts
Abate this restlessness
Dying is in the wrong tense
With it comes an unfolding
Too easy and too gentle
When there is no unfolding
Only it is the whiplash
I cannot recall it
Distanced as I am
Caught up in the act of living
The only unfolding
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- The Quest for Gold , pp. 183 - 185Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2016