The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 31

Young man:
I saw…something, I don’t know what it was
Creature or half-creature, the male within the female,
A mask that might be from some world other than this
Or maybe it was the true mask of myself,
Beautiful but with terror about it like a corona
Around the moon.
It repelled me even as it fascinated me
And works its way through me
Like a worm through an apple.
Old man:
You saw what I saw
You saw the face within the leaves!
Admit it!
Young man:
Yes, I saw it
I didn’t want to but I saw it.
So now I sense that I also have become a custodian
Who must carry this image further into the next generation.
You’re task is done old man, you can rest now,
The beauty and the grief will survive in memory
And maybe one day I’ll write it in a poem
To carry it into the common tongue
For the daytime mind to hold.
.
Old man:
We can do no more than that.
We witness and attest what we do not understand
But yet maintain allegiance to.
It was so with me, may it be so with you.
From now on I will witness nothing but death
And you will continue with your wandering
Until you also meet death disguised as itself.
Perhaps some descendent
If not of your blood then of your caste
Will also inherit this image and pay rightful homage
And at the rightful moment unravel its meanings