Poem 12
A little ‘metaphysical’ fancy, deliberately kept light and playful in spite of conveying deep truth and the need for patience.
The horn of the sun is the trumpet of the breaking of Baba’s silence which will bring crashing down the walls of our self-created prison like the Biblical walls of Jericho.
Our barriers relate to the world of shadows too and when the zero hour midday is reached will disappear. These shadows are on the earthly plane but cannot prevent the vertical downpouring of grace when His time comes.
The shadow becomes a figure of the seductive beckoning on the outward journey of desires, like some fascinating minx.
But as the opening line suggests we become aware of the radiance of the sun through the existence of our shadow, hinting at the whole miraculous purpose of creation as God’s mirror.
Love of created things is a horn that wilts (suggestion of sexual satiety?). Shadow play will never bring in the new day. It is when the shadow disappears that the true union of self and Beloved can be consummated.
Our trusting patience is possible because we can sit in ‘heart’s corridor’, that is the narrow place in touch with the secret knowledge of the heart.
Because I see my shadow I know love’s sun has risen.
But my fascination with my shadow has become my prison.
My shadow goes out from me and turns back and beckons,
Come! Let us dance together along new horizons.
I answer, Invite me no more my sweet little witch;
Many times I have danced out with you — into a ditch!
We said our love will awaken the earth to a new dawn:
But my spirit blew only cracked notes on its wilted horn.
I will sit out my prison-sitting in my heart’s corridor;
At midday your beauty will be buried beneath this floor.
For although my prison has thick walls, it has no roof —
And of love’s sun’s glory mid-day will bring burning proof.
Not only you, darling Shadow, will have vanished — but the horn of the sun
Will bring down these walls, and I and my true Beloved will be one.