Journey
Over mountains, valleys and plains
Walked I
Wandering like a shadow
Without form and without
Shape
Seeking in Solitude, I know not what!
Running always
From that which call I
“Society”
Continuous as the rays of the sun
Each new day finds me
Searching for another shore …….Another
Horizon
What oft asked I means
The mysteries of life captivating
Mine inward eye?
What is this force that keeps me
Dancing
Upon the wanderer’s path?
Is it the lot of poets…..to
Beat upon their souls like drums
While they themselves;
Ramain ever far distant ever far…. and
Alone?
Sawest I many times
Humanity preying upon its….own
Flesh
And drowning in the sea of its …..own
Blood.
Sawest I the “children of Adam’s
Fallen Race”
Preparing their own destruction
To keep alive their selfishness and greed
Sawest I them at another time
Like asses in the market place
Loaded with law books and useless philosophies
Which were to them tools of confusion and chaos
Sawest I them puking up their filth
In the name of politics and religion
Causing the ignorant who drinketh it up
To intoxicate and enrage——the
Unsurmounted beast of their baser nature
Like packs of dogs they attack
And rend each other to pieces
Wondered I within my own heart
What have I to do with the “children of Adam”?
Will they ever fulfil ther higher destiny ?
Must they forever ramain suspended
Between the slumbering of their nobler selves
And the tyranny of their unsurmounted beasts
Must they forever like flies
Huddle in the market place
Where they fight for things…..infested
With maggots and worms
While the storehouses of like….are
Filled with niceties undefiled
Who am I? wondered I at another time
That I should be wroth against the “children of Adam”
They “like packs of dogs prey upon each other”
But do I not prey upon my own self?
They deem I victims of the tyranny…of
Their unsurmounted beasts
But do they not in their struggle to surmount .. their
Beasts
Stay together, fight and die together.
Am I not then a coward
Who would fain retreat from their struggle
Of transcending beast into man
To hold council with mountains and …the
Stars
Where in the seclusion of my soul
Deem I them more beast than beast
Do I not in deserting “the children of Adam”
Desert Humanity?
And also desert my own self
Alas no repented I
I will not be so vile as to hate the beast in man
For there dwells a thing within me
Which is even more beast than their beast
I will not be so base
As to desert humanity for the sake of my own
Aloneness
What is my aloneness but a thing vain and trammeled
By the passions of self
Is not humanity one eternal chain
Of which I am a link
What then seek I in solitude and aloneness
What virtues have I acquired
That I may give as a bounty to humanity
The sun which sustaineth the life of
Creation
Shed not its radiance only upon the mountains and the
Hills
But upon the valleys, plains and deserts also
It shineth in its full measure
Upon things high and low alike
Such is the justice of life
Of what value are my virtues
If I should forever keep them
Within the boundaries of solitude and aloneness
Must I not then surmount my solitude and aloneness
Rise above the judgement of mine inward eye
To embrace all humanity with free and loving heart
All these things said I
Within mine inner heart
Still, many years spent I
Avoiding the company of mankind
Then the world at a glance saw I
Like a dark night travailing
With the pergnancy of a new light
At another glance saw I this light
Emanating from the womb of the world
Shedding its brilliance upon a people
Whose morning had not yet become day
Beyond many lives and lands
Transcended I my mind
Ere understood I the meaning of this light
When it had illumined the hearts of many peoples
Percieved I through mine inward inner eye
“The earth is one country and mankind its citizens”
With new hopes and new dreams
Vowed I to abandon my solitude and aloneness
To dwell where I truly belong
Within the family of man
Ken George Dill
Mandeville Jamaica
Many moons ago