Where troubles play, the feeling’s right,
The world comes out to see :
The wind is calling to the moon,
The pine-scent’s floating free.
And on the howls of distant dogs,
And down unto the sea,
In freezing air beneath cold stars
My spirit spoke to me :
‘Too long you’ve waited, time is done,
Too long - the time is right;
You change upon this mountain now,
You change - you change tonight!’
‘Too long’, I groaned, the time was done :
‘Too long!’- I held my head:
Better I had been unborn,
Better I was dead.
Better I had found a fire
And plunged myself in there ;
To change myself, impossible!
More than I could bear.
But all he said, my spirit,
Was, ‘Stand up tall and straight!
The time has come for change tonight!’ -
My spirit will not wait.
19/7/00
This poem was based on time I spent in Greece, chilled to the bone one night at the top of a mountain looking out to the distant sea, with dogs barking faintly and thoughts whirling around my head.
