Anam Cara

INNER CIRCLE

For John Moriarty

Stranger sometimes than the yellow crotchet

Of glimpses that civilize the dark, or the

Shelter of voices who stall the dead

Silence that longs to return to stone,

Stranger is the heart, a different scripture,

Weighed down by thoughts of gods

Who will never emerge, to recommend

One way above another to anywhere,

Lest they distract from the festival

Of vivid presence, where journeys are not

Stretched over distance, and time

Is beyond the fatality of before and

After, and elsewhere and otherwise

Do not intrude on day or night.