Years of Pilgrimage

a long poem by Tim Cloudsley

with border art by Mary Johnston

part 4

Floating Island

Now can you feel as a drifting bird

Your creative unconscious incomprehensibly

Exuding strange creatures like submarinal trenches

Or beauties like the round light reflected

From the sun in bubbles of sea and air

Or the miraculous birds of the Pantanal

Her mouth so soft like delicious fruit

Her eyes so bright like dark suns

Her lips that jump the heart craving

Her soft skin nippled in ecstasy


Chance

Is it true that Chance is not contingent,

That the juxtaposition of things in time and space

Is not accidental; as Jung thought,

And T.S. Eliot, following the I Ching?

Flotsam, jetsam, and prostitutes

Seem to be my natural companions

Is that Chance or Destiny?

Or is it my personality.

Was Nadja real, or an eternal fantasy,

The coming together of a magical glance,

A fatal look in dangerous eyes,

The flicker of a light on a boat droning

Along the Rio Paraguay:

A thought accompanied by a flock of parakeets,

The sun in orange dusk?

What Chance operated to force me out so far?

Why did my heart and soul

Beat so strangely and hear such strange

Silence: why did dogs

Seem to bark at every corner.

Out here we are immaculate

Like birds with beautiful yellow underbellies


In Harmony Of Truth

Women suffer a lot of misery

Because they are the child-bearing half

Of our species. They just plug on,

With beautiful smiles and their sexiness.

I suffer a lot of misery

For being me - I do not speak of 'men';

I just plug on, and write poetry.

How stupid to think we can reverse the Sea of Chaos,

As if we could remodel the Earth

Into a gentle ball without its fire,

And tame tectonic plates and magma,

Or command volcanoes to stop.

Or should we re-engineer the species

So that everyone can wear spectacles,

Or turn hermaphrodite,

To become a philosopher?

If there were no Utopians

To bleed their lives and suffer Hell,

How would anything ever change,

Even in tiny fractions?

Love we can have, that is free,

We can find it in our own hearts

By ourselves, and let it try

To do the best we can.

Why do we not live in the Pre-Cambrian,

Why do we see only violet to red,

Why are we not fish, or saints;

What we are, we hardly know.

But, we can feel love, I know,

That alone swims through the rocks,

Not easily, but it is good,

The best thing we can feel.

There flew an angel at my birth,

She was as bright as Mystery,

She pointed at the Other Way,

But did not say how to enter It,

And so I tried to fly too,

Through perfumed paradises and books of Truth,

And there I stumbled and fell, and cried,

But losing blood did not lose my faith

In love, although, in my constant anger,

I constantly lost Her, and wrecked contact

With her ever-shimmering and ever-true

Beauty and honesty, through blind death

And bizarre stupidity, of my own making

Or of accident. But She always forgave me

Ultimately, and I could come back

To soften under her wonderful folds,

And she kissed my eyelids again, and sent

Me back into true dreams, in ecstatic love

Of everything, soaked in her feminine loveliness,

That was there again like the Ocean

Of eternal time. It never runs dry,

It is only you who lose Her.

Her warm wings keep you afloat

And caIm you like sacred medicine,

Her kindness kisses you like flame

And you know you are there again

In wonderland where your brain calms;

And your mind and soul feel at one with the Moon.


Ladário

Blue dark rippling Rio Paraguai

Hazy sky blue sun wisping cloud

Magical birds multi-coloured extraordinarily

Red white black blue yellow white

Rippling water of the Pantanal

Sun twinkling reflections in Ladário

Morros like pyramids on other side

Sun is warm wind cool in Ladário


Bossa Nova

To be mesmerized

By a sexy voice

The very peach of love

That crazy language

Brazilian Portuguese

Makes the music of Bossa Nova

Seducing you to melted fruit

Sweet juice drowning you in desire

And the softness of satisfaction


Sweet Sound Of Desire

And then you fly surprisingly

With the sweet sound of desire,

In spite of all confusion,

In spite of all delusion,

And forget, for now, persecution,

Or hateful manipulation.

Nothing holds steady over the long term,

Mountains move, whales change into bears,

Moods swing like musical yoyos,

Love deserts her victim like a bird

With restless wings. Joy bids soft adieu

Like a clown kissing his fingers;

And all dies; houses fall,

Bodies rot into new soil.

So when the joy rings,

Kiss it as it flies,

Thus sinking into eternity’s sunrise,

Taking in the perfumes of ecstasy.


Love, Not War

A prophet spake from a mountain-top:

"Make love, not war, I implore,"

And memory filled with inconceivable suffering,

Misery of millions of African slaves,

Misery for which we know no words,

As for the Jews murdered at Birkenau.

Death, Dream, and Unconsciousness,

The three states of the person - for the Chiquitos;

They are the three Abuelos,

Not permitted to join the fiesta.


Aymara Lady

An Aymara lady sat outside the Cathedral

In Santa Cruz; she was begging

With three children, one at her breast.

She was young, beautiful, dignified;

Sad, but not broken. She looked

Serenely indigenous in her shapely hat

And green dress. I asked her from where she came:

"Potosi." Had her husband deserted her,

Or had he and she decided this

Was the best way to survive?

God knows, but He does not exist.

That lady existed, and was sweetly grateful

For the little money I gave.


La Soledad, Mi Amiga

Today I know

My friend Solitude again

My lover the Moon

The woman of my desires

My intemperate love

My hopelessness in endless desire

My insatiable desire

My Moon of Solitude


Poetry Is Music

Music that arises from the unconscious mind,

Or the soul, the brain on the verge of sleep,

Poetry freeing the shaman’s wings

As a fish flying over Lake Guatavita,

A jaguar breathing dreams of fire,

Visions escaping the Guilt and Fear

That Someone wishes always to infect

Your life with, to make you

Crippled: yeah! drive Him back

As an evil dragon with your flaming sword.

0 Realm Without Frontiers, resplendent

Garden Of Poetry!

Let all the birds of the Andean skies,

And all the women with gorgeous eyes,

Fly and sing in siren song

And bathe us in invulnerability!


Nidia

One of the lights in the sky that shines

In the darkness, dreams across the night

And the gentle waves kissing the shore

With a few lights twinkling in the misty sky

And the love of her eyes and her delicious hair

And her lips talking in silence deep

On the shore where the love of the universe,

The flower of the universe sings her perfume

And smells the leaves and the tropical dreams

And the ocean breathes through all hopes, and kills

All that stops the undulating sands

From joining with the sea and the joyful sky

As the earth and sky hold each other tight

As lovers to eternity, creating what we

Call Reality. And my brain is on fire

For the night-butterflies that flutter by

Like dreams of light in lightning spasms,

Like ladies of the night searching colours;

This crazy girl with her gorgeous skin

Sparkling stars into new birth,

Stars that streak across the sky,

She kisses the flowers whose perfumes she smells,

And tempts all life to overleap itself

With her pearls around her neck of moon,

With her silhouette in the seething sea;

She is dissolving me into the sea.


Blood On Fire

I was as lost as the stones that will

No longer bleed tomorrow.

I was as drenched in holy blood

As a victim of martyrdom.

I was as hated, and I was at war

As hard as a partisan,

My dismal fears and uncertainties,

My diabolical chaos and soul on fire,

My death in frustration, struggle in flames,

My fears and emptiness, my tears of yearning,

All were congealed into blood on fire.


Love Night

I feel now as if the years flow

In beauty through my veins,

Your love at last touches all

The sinews of my being,

And the dogs of hate disappear,

And the starry night floats above

Grand mountains of dark rock and sea

And the sparkling lights pervade the sky

In music of the divine spheres

And the Form of Harmony in loving truth

Of happiness. I hear the sounds

Of lapping waves around my ears

And my senses touch your invisible mind

In silent darkness of mystery.


Dynamic Form

Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus;

Hermetic philosophy and Mozart;

Taoist immortality and Meister Eckert;

Shelley, and Muisca shamanism:

All can merge and interact,

Mind is everywhere and perfection intact

Inside it; Nature is eternal,

And a kernal of Truth lies in every grain.

To find the laws of proportion and order

In reality; to feel transformative processes

In nature and humanity: that is Art,

Saturated in deep feeling, divine madness.

Life without Mozart’s music

Would be like the Universe imploded

Into a dark, cold, minute, dead,

Infinitely heavy Black Hole.

Without Justice there is no life,

Justice is for all, or not at all.

Without Justice and Universal Love

The soul dies, or is never born.


I would miss her open sweetness

If her love would disappear,

Once again I would feel choked

Into cold normality.

If she withdrew her love from me

Frozen again would I be;

My darling, in your sweet eyes

And softness, lies such loveliness.


Skock

Flame it is as if the night were new

The crazy stars surround the burning moon

The wild bats and fire-flies

Spin mysterious silent webs

The sparkling heavens break loose of light

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a raunchland publication 2002

text © Tim Cloudsley 2002

images © Mary Johnstone 2002