Towards Democracy

MP3 Audio CD. Towards Democracy

PART ONE

The sun, the moon and the stars, the grass, the water that flow,
round the earth, and the light air of heaven:
To You greeting. I too stand behind these and send you word
across them.

I

Freedom at last!
Long sought, long prayed for - ages and ages long:

The burden to which I continually return, seated here thick-
booted and obvious yet dead and buried and passed into heaven,
unsearchable;

[How know you indeed but what I have passed into you?]

And Joy, beginning but without ending-the journey of
journeys - Thought laid quietly aside:

These things I, writing, translate for you - I wipe a mirror and
place it in your hands.

II
The sun shines, as of old; the stars look down from heaven; the
moon, crescent, sails in the twilight; on bushy tops in the warm
nights, naked, with mad dance and song, the earth-children address
themselves to love;

Civilisation sinks and swims, but the old facts remain - the sun
smiles, knowing well its strength.

The little red stars appear once more on the hazel boughs,
shining among the catkins; over waste lands the pewit tumbles
and cries as at the first day; men with horses go out on the land
- they shout and chide and strive - and return again glad at
evening; the old earth breathes deep and rhythmically, night and
day, summer and winter, giving and concealing herself.

I arise out of the dewy night and shake my wings.

Tears and lamentations are no more. Life and death lie stretched
below me. I breathe the sweet aether blowing of the breath of God.

Deep as the universe is my life - and I know it; nothing can
dislodge the knowledge of it; nothing can destroy, nothing can
harm me.