A Sixth Door Opens

Sometimes after a day

of hearing the dissonant voice of the world,

beneath the stars I watch the moon

silver the ebon shade till all is silence;

then I step lightly into my many chambered mind

and close its five doors.

Noiseless, a sixth door opens--

a door forgotten when the five are wide.

To the patterned rhythm of the spheres

I drift back aeons to a time-forgotten kingdom

and enter, not as a stranger:

Old friends embrace me and I speak with the Gods I knew

before I breathed the Lethean vapors of birth.

Again I see the PLAN:

the beginning ... the now ... the ending.

(I sang for joy in the beginning.)

Tuned to the mysteries I hear strange music:

the strains in thunder chords and lightning flares;

in winds and quakings of the earth;

in the steel-winged sky ... in death ... and know

that the dissonance of war and tears

will blend into eternal melody.

Slowly I return.

The five doors open ...

Faint Whisperings

In solitude I hear faint whisperings
From some ethereal sphere where once I lived
And loved and learned before I came here through
The door of birth. And oftentimes when I
Firm-clasp a stranger's hand across the miles
Or at my door, I hear the distant bells
Of some far Temple where we both have knelt;
I breathe the fragrance of the jasmined-air
Of a celestial garden; hear the song
Of an aeolian harp that once was strummed
By heavenly winds ... I hear faint whisperings--
Perhaps the breath of immortality.