Monday, June 06, 2016
"Be Prepared to Swelter"––poem by Dorothy
BE PREPARED TO SWELTER
If you want to go there,
check your boots and your water bottle carefully.
Find the map
that the old one gave you
so long ago
and do your best to follow it,
though often
you will make the wrong turn,
go astray.
Be prepared to swelter under many suns, drown
in countless rivers.
You will be shipwrecked many times, or else burnt to cinder,
dust to dust.
You will meet strange winged creatures who have no names,
beings descending
from the sky
or rising up like cloud specters from below.
They will tell you
how to continue,
what paths to follow,
but check carefully what they say.
Sometimes you will fall into caverns or caves,
and will not know how to get out until you see a
a faint light coming from a crack or crevice,
lit wings beckoning.
When you at last arrive,
you may not remember who you are,
what you were seeking, why you came.
It will not matter.
Now only silence will do.
Dorothy Walters
from A Cloth of Fine Gold
