Poem 22
We went through the streets
that went through the houses
that were built in the people who
had opal eyes and mushroom ears,
lips as beautiful and brittle as coral
and hair of violin grass.
And we came out into a whiteness
beyond the moon and the sun beyond
the symphonic utterances of galaxies,
into the pure whiteness of space which
is the seed-bed of music and architecture.
And we found that we were walking on God’s shadow.
And faraway on the horizon of emptiness
the rainbow smiled with pleasure and approval.
A little poem of visionary celebration and how nice it is for us to share such a moment of affirmation of the way. The scene is deliberately beyond nature and surreal. Words can even do things beyond surrealistic painting – ‘hair of violin grass’. And words can point beyond the heightened experiences of the surreal to a world of both emptiness and potentiality.
It cannot be a direct revelation of the divine, it is only a sign of Him and his promises, his rainbow. But it is a sign of love for those following the path.
The poem forms a lovely flowing journey from exteriors, houses and streets to the inmost world of the surety of His presence. Deliberately it ends in what might be an illustration from a child’s picture book. Notice in Stanza 1 that the houses were built ‘in’ the people, emphasizing the inward journey.