FIRESEED

A
Book
of
Sonnets
by
VLADIMIR
TREFILOV

Translated
by
N a d y ezhd a Spassenko

Translation
Edited
by
R icha r d D.Ha thawa y
 Vladimir Trefilov. Fireseed. A Book of Sonnets. 2_nd Ed. M.: Anch, 2005.
ISBN 5–9631–0006–2 © V.A. Trefilov, 2005
KALLAGIUM

DIALOG
A.Z.

The epoch of Shambalah comes upon the world.

Look, my child, on high, beneath the clouds,
From that sharp peak of yonder crag of blue
A fiery banner trembles in the sky.
Are you ready in that Day of Dark, Obscurity
To light the Fire and, with firm hands,
Take this all-cleansing flame
Into the tarry nethers of the Soul?
Oh, yes, oh Teacher of the Light, I'm ready!
I've cast away the familiar chain of tyranny,
Of bygone truths, symbols and words.
From spirit's sleep I'm now awakened.
Out of the depths of space I hear
The holy call: "Kallagium!"
FLIGHT

A CYCLE OF SONNETS
To my wife Tatyana

I
On the horizon clouds were rolling,
Blue mist lay in the valley,
A rush of river, shining on the rocky slope,
Roared like an organ in this mountain kirk.
And like a great cathedral column –
The last remaining of an ancient grove –
A lonely giant stood, a sycamore,
A child of Heaven all red and gold.
Chimera-like a band of woodsmen now
Inched toward it to the tune of a metal saw.
"What wood for floors!
What first class veneer!"
Still heavenward all full of faith she stretched –
With eagles and vultures soaring skyward.

II
With eagles and vultures soaring skyward
Audacious courage awoke in her.
But roots – they went deep into earth –
Fixed at the edge of an abyss.
Said she: "Oh, symbol of Kabbalah,
Oh, roots, now I need light more than the dew.
Undo your hardened knots
To free my first decisive step!"
Rocks parted with a hollow moan,
Deep in the crag the crevice formed,
And, spreading wings within her massive gown,
She flew, now freed of ancient bonds.
Above the planet in a foam of clouds
The sun was rising in its golden crown.
89
III
The sun was rising in its golden crown,
And a million years ago,
In a fantastic distant aeon,
A reptile – ancient, huge, good natured –
Seeing that first ray arrive on earth,
Came crawling onto land, and it was glad
To warm its sides upon the rocky slope
Or turn its ample back toward the sun.
Inertness lurked now only in dark corners,
But all that moved, and breamed, and lived, –
From sea needle to the mighty dinosaur –
Greeted that primordial source of light.
Life it gave and shone,
Dispersing tufts of ancient gloom.
10 11
IV
Dispersing tufts of ancient gloom,
The Sun god flew in an aureole of light,
Upon a chariot of golden hue,
Casting rays in every corner dark.
The darkness fought against those arrows sharp.
Slowly the sleeping planet stirred.
And from a thrust of crag a youthful priest
Blessed the mystery of dawning.
He thought of hapless Phaethon,
And – firmly standing on the crag – dreamed wings,
Feeling buoyant wind upon his palms,
As a bird feels air beat in its wing.
But his feet were firmly grown into the earth,
Stuck in a law – inert and blind.
13
V
Stuck in a law – inert and blind,
Each person in dreams is winged.
But not by painting them on icons did he get his wings.
Nor yet by habit nor by hollow way of saints.
Having given up in embryo the right to wings,
The older sibling of the soaring bird,
Took axe in hands with knowledge strong
And made an apparatus with those wings.
Binding russet locks with rope,
"Dangerous fool, free thinker of no use,"
He jumped down, winged, from the cliff
And – wounded, dirty – crept along the slope,
Stuck in gravity and blood,
As in a drop of tar congealing.
15
VI
As in a drop of tar congealing –
The oldest of the planet's traps –
The bee's wings beat, stuck,
Every effort now a suffering,
And so we could not out of ancient gloom
Fly up on wings of joy and knowing:
Bodily shackles held us down,
But ever with us audacity of wanting.
There was the leap. A trace against the sky.
Then broken wings. And struggle.
Icarus. And Phaethon.
Now in the new age – a new chapter is penned
Of wings. Bright words we're shown
About a seagull – Jonathan Livingston.
19
VII
About a seagull – Jonathan Livingston –
I pondered among the overhanging cliffs.
Here was an intelligent I in winged form
Who went the way for which I searched.
Through struggles with space in whirlwind and cyclone
He understood the essence of cosmic beginnings.
Like lightning flashed across the heavens
He cried out his enlightenments to me.
I knew how eagles soared among the clouds,
I knew the law of rocket flight,
How moves a ray, a stone, an arrow, bullet,
Only the answer for myself I couldn't find.
Awaiting dawn in stillness,
I brooded on a crooked face of crag.
21
VIII
I brooded on a crooked face of crag
Over the fineness of body needed for interstellar traveling,
Able, as if an arrow,
To pierce the space-time firmament.
White willow tendrils stretched out to the light.
In habit's eternal constancy,
A golden bee buzzed on its wings,
And butterflies twirled in an airy dance.
Each one flew high as it was able
To greet the sun in this old mountainous cathedral,
There was no loftier or more important task.
Just I seemed glued to crag as if an inert rock.
I swung apart my wingless hands
And cursed our human destiny.
23
IX
I cursed our human destiny
And ancient habit of meekly
Dragging about our heavy shackle of bodies,
Each weighted down with worldly cares.
Spirit has grown heavy from this habit.
When inert bodies move in inert space
We call it flight,
And cultivate mere moving things about.
Spirit created airplane, and then rocket,
Forgetting that it itself has wings.
And having severed body from the planet,
In pridefulness it was exceeding glad
That cage-like apparatuses began
To carry around the Cosmic Bird of Light.
25
X
To carry around the Cosmic Bird of Light
And bend the back in bowing down to dark,
To greet with lovely hymn the dawning hour
While hiding anger, dirt and dregs within the heart.
Denying knowing the Testament of old
While yet affirming now we know the truth,
To be on Earth's body – but a mold
Is what we've chosen for our afflicted path.
The spirit hones the process of decay
Behind the bustle of the every day.
The fire that burned in us from the beginning
Is now the source of smoke and soot.
Each monad has forgotten the Ancient Starry Course
Within our heavy wingless frames.
27
XI
Within our heavy wingless frames
Every atom becomes wingless,
And Spirit has waned, having forgotten wings,
In pridefulness transforming knowing into dogma.
Behind the bustle of arguments and words and deeds
We never notice that – terrible and winged – the
Archangel now has sounded and flown away,
That time is fleeing, and that reckoning is near.
Of what was Seagull crying up above the planet?
About a body of some other matter?
Or of wings woven of light?
Those words burned me as by a ray, a flame,
My head whirled round and rang inside,
And then I understood the Testament's secret meaning.
29
XII
And then I understood the Testament's secret meaning.
Singeing Spirit's wings it sought
To bring a Teacher through the cosmos
To a wingless planet.
But flight needs no rocket,
No reactive payload, no stick to steer.
Engulfed in energy of fire and light –
Biofields alone will pierce the cosmic continuum.
Faster than a comet full of wings
We can fly to stars without a rocket.
I opened out my arms above the dawn
And felt how energy burst into me
Giving wings to my wingless frame.
I took a step above the morning planet.
31
ХIII
I took a step above the morning planet,
A tree expecting the cut of a saw,
A youthful priest expecting dawn,
Sending hymns and praise to the sun,
That seeker after light and knowledge,
Who in the age of campfires, candles, gloom,
Threw dogmas and taboos aside
And leapt – enwinged – from the cliff.
I, as they, burned with desire
To fly and greet the day beneath the clouds
Airborne bodies flying to the sun.
I waved my now enwinged arms,
I kicked aside the moss-grown rock,
I felt my wings, and flew.
43
XIV
I felt my wings and flew,
I melted in the ocean of light,
And sang a song for those on Earth,
In a huge sky soaring above the planet:
"For but an hour, but an instant, leave your affairs!
Receive my testament to you:
Oh, brothers, sisters, go beyond your own horizons!
I'm sending you a cycle of my songs...."
And people all raised up their hands,
And at their backs wings grew.
I sang to them of Cosmic Law –
And people behind me followed flying
To where, above the rock, earth shining,
On the horizon clouds were rolling.

XV
On the horizon clouds were rolling.
With eagles and vultures soaring skyward
The sun was rising in its golden crown
Dispersing tufts of ancient gloom.
Stuck in a law – inert and blind –,
As in a drop of tar congealing,
Over a seagull – Jonathan Livingston –
I brooded on a crooked face of crag,
I cursed our human destiny
To carry around the Cosmic Bird of Light
Within our heavy wingless frames.
And then I understood the Testament's secret meaning.
I took a step above the morning planet,
And felt my wings. And flew.
July – August 1982
WHITE OBELISK

***
Beloved, how too soon You left me
For the eternal, lovely world of the beyond,
Your bright clear soul could not take in
The every day confusing of evil with the good.
The flowers grieve. The bells ring out.
Weeping is useless and for nought,
But let your wings hover a while
Upon the red sunset at edge of night.
So for an instant. But I will put into an instant
Ages of love, and tenderness and light,
Your spouse, Your friend, Yourpartner, twin,
Your comet flying through the gloom.
And then let Lethe, river of forgetting,
Swallow up our proud, victorious cry.
12 October 1987
04
***
Oh, lovely, into my fate you came,
My soul of souls, my second me.
We plunged into happiness and straggle,
Into amazing moments of the everyday.
We held all in common – songs and flowers,
Dawnings and the silver mist,
That flight through flame of emptiness,
And endless, starry sea.
Those same roses are on her table,
Those same songs pour forth beneath the moon,
And foggy mists spread over the land,
And I fly on above the starry planet.
But there are drops of blood upon my wings.
I fly alone. And she is not with me.
April, 1987
24
***
Golden one, youthful one of mine,
You come to me in my bewitching dream.
Above the planet – nightingales' song
And cicada's soft, transparent ring.
We are together at the River Fire
Looking at the sparkling setting sun,
A light flutter of a hand so thin.....
Breath of lips so young.....tender glance......
Oh, love of mine, Your words forever sing
Within the heart of one who loves you so.
You are alive! alive! alive! alive!.....
Your golden eyes pour sunlight.
My head is dizzy all for love, and
There are a million minutes before you die.
April, 1987

***
In dream I enter the great hollow temple
Of my soul, erected somewhere in a desert.
There was a time when incense wafted
Before the icon of a goddess young.
In pride I rejected her love,
Cast away the signs of fate,
I hungered for blue suns and black pussy willows,
I waited for another – ninth – day of creation.
The wind nests now and cries resound
In my forgotten temple in the desert,
And emptiness stares strangely out
Of a frame where once was a goddess' radiant mien.
Oh, magic moment, return again
When here were heard "I love you" and "Amen".
1982
SONNET OF A BRANCHING TWIG

She blossomed, breathed and lived,

The starry ocean lived within her eyes,
Two fiery wings brought her
From distant starry lands to native Earth.
She left..... The bells peal out,
An organ rings its grief into the world.
A great hurricane took her away.
Love and life did not overcome evil.
Love of mine, light up my path,
I carry you as if a torch, as if a star,
With you I'll find forgotten paths.
Into the land of shades I'll go to seek my love.
We will bloom as a branching twig
In an orchard flooded with sunlight.
1982
DEATH' S ROCK

At the very bottom of a striated expanse

There is an ancient mournful rock.
The paths of many pilgrimages lead here,
Here join the paths of Evil and the Good.
Having learned the Empyrean
Light Great poets and prophets renowned –
Orpheus, Aurobindo, Rishi Ved –
Found their paths in this Great Rock.
I sent a word, as a bow sends an arrow forth,
I knew the ways of Bible and the Gita,
Through gloom and bottomless unconscious
I carried the Great Zenith Fire,
But vainly round the monolith I roamed,
Attempting with song to open up the rock.
7 march 1988

2
WHITE OBELISK
A CYCLE OF SONNETS

And he erected an Obelisk to the

Departed in the year of the Dragon
and carved words of love and grief
on its socle and on its faces.

INSCRIPTION ON THE SOCLE

Leaving wilted stubble touched with rot

The Great Reaper cuts Beauty down.
With folded wings of fire and life
You died, as if a bird, in flight.
Your obelisk through sparks of starry dust
Streams into eternity, higher, higher,
While I, beside, in grief and helplessness,
Fill the emptiness with prayer.
Beloved, here I am, Your spouse,
Your friend, In anguish I have left the battle field,
My poem wanes, fatal my affliction is.
A noose of troubles rings around my neck.
Oh, heal the one who stands upon the brink
By laying on of tender, slender hands.

INSCRIPTIONS ON THE FACES

I
Leaving wilted stubble touched with rot
That can't become the gift of bread
Beneath a grey layer of poisoned dust
Upon a dying world,
The Reaper cut Rose in her strength and beauty
For the golden altar of the gods,
And tears of sorrow bedewed the faces
Of those she loved and also of her foes.
But in vain the voices and glances
In agony and prayer streamed into the heights,
The priest cast reproaches into empty spaces
And tore at his holy garments –
The Reaper doesn't need decay and rot,
The Great Reaper cuts Beauty down.

II
"The Great Reaper cuts Beauty down" –
So I named the strange sick dream,
Evoking malady and moaning,
As does a wound beneath a film of pus....
A wondrous dream – source of strength and prana,
As if a daydream took its place,
And upward carried me on wings
Into the harmony of Organ Universal:
Forgetting death, not counting now the miles,
Outside of time, and space and number,
In worlds of spirit suns we proudly swam,
Blending together our slender bodies,
Or – like two eagles – flew into infinity
With folded wings of fire and life.

III
With folded wings of fire and life,
Towards a shining star we fell,
In a magnetic calm that lulls the
Soul, In a vibrating, fiery milieu.
And, happy, we forgot completely,
In love, in victory, in joyous work,
About the awful force that oversees mortals,
About misfortune, night and parting asunder.
But heaven threw forth blackness,
And straightaway both stars and planets dimmed,
I delved into the night and numbness,
While You, flashing comet-like through space,
Into a quantum of warmth and light transformed your life
And died, as if a bird, – in flight.

IV
You died, as if a bird, – in flight,
Without a moan, offense, or blame,
You entered emptiness and night as if they were water
Long before your own appointed time.
You crossed over the Great Divide,
Tearing asunder the silken threads of Fate,
Leaving me with your orphaned eaglet
And the sense of shock and horror.
The snows hid over my now empty world.
Then melted. A year is wending on its way.
The stubs of severed wings hurt so.
And nothing can assuage this.
The day grows old, and slips into the night
Your Obelisk through sparks of starry dust.

V
Your Obelisk through sparks of starry dust
Rises upward to that sparkling star,
Where there are no decay, and mold, and rot,
And lack of unity. Up to that space,
Where moments and miles have no place,
Where fee spirit can be everywhere,
Where wings cut through a myriad of things,
As if they were a bank of clouds.
Into that world, where, leaving all behind,
The Spirit goes for boundless trek,
When carrying the body is too much
Or when on wings of dream and trance
Out of sluggish space of earth
It streams ever higher, into eternity.
7
VI
Ever higher, into eternity, streams
The quantum of awareness embodied in matter,
Having learned beauty and bustle,
Having trod the path of ripening and struggle.
There is no holding back
The One Who Flies into Dream
Neither by a call, a ban, nor weeping,
Nor sacrifice, nor prayer, nor fast,
Nor knowledge of the secrets of existence.
And You have gone. Your wings have sounded by.
I look around: in heavens is a flattened disc,
And Earth lies flattened beneath a dust layer,
And only the three-dimensioned White Obelisk
Has taken flight above the flattened Earth
While I remain in grief and helplessness.

VII
While I remain in grief and helplessness,
In night's cyclone, in cold of sepulcher,
Like a mournful priest on Ganges or the Nile,
Singing my verses, face cast down.
I bless each thing that we loved:
Your gentle, fragile world of birds and flowers,
I bless our flight and wings
And sweep of Your majestic eyelashes.
I bless both Life and Beauty
And immerse myself in a Field of Dreams,
My voice flies through the blackness
Out of world of wilt and mold,
Another dimension builds the bridge,
Filling the emptiness with prayer.

VIII
I fill the emptiness with prayer –
A vibrating transcendental sound,
Like an arrow piercing the dark
Sent by consciousness' mighty bow.
I cross over the Divide with a mantra.
I raise a trembling hand
And trouble the mighty granite slab
With a quiet, careful knock.
Beneath a dense substance a hatch is hidden
To the cosmic Tunnel of Black,
Through which Your Soul, its round completed,
Went for its cleansing in the font.
And so I knock. I am, at last, at goal,
Beloved, here I am, Your spouse, Your friend.
72 73
IX
Beloved, here I am, Your spouse, Your friend.
I reached, as Orpheus, the lands of Hades.
My quiet knock sounds underneath the vault:
It sounds of pain of parting, gentleness and hurt.
My verses call – they're full of strength and ailing,
They're new and dissonant as hybrids –
Crosses of sciences so newly minted, exact and dry,
With secret ancient wisdom of the Druids.
I made the Muse a tunic out of darkest cloth
nd led her into a passing, fragile world
Where stupor of wine will not overcome me.
Nor will the awful sound of pole-axe lure me, –
Let the battle rage and feast go on without me,
In anguish I have left the battle field.

X
In anguish I have left the battle field,
I left the bustle, worries, projects,
And donned the saffron robes of non-doing
Complete and total silences observing.
And yet I want, in this farewell hour,
To let my voice cry out and ring the same
As in the hour of love and first time rendezvous,
And give me strength to cross the Great Divide.
Orpheus, Teacher, – it is I, your heir.
On Earth my verses healed and wounded,
But vainly I repeat the secret sound –
The heavy stone neither moves nor budges,
The sounds of "Amen" fall inertly ....
My poem wanes.... fatal my affliction is.

XI
My poem wanes. Fatal my affliction is.
My body numbs. The field vanishes.
Already it is like the pale moon's orb,
Like wings of the gray apple moth.
Foreign thoughts – an angry ball of vipers –
Nag my brain with a crazy dance of pain.
Out of apertures of gloom stretch fingers
Of greedy limbs of trolls and vampires.
Awareness teeters above the abyss,
And earth floats out from underfoot,
Barely flickers the fire of love and knowledge,
Which my teachers gave me,
But tighter, ever tighter is the noose of black,
A noose of troubles ringed around my neck.

XII
A noose of troubles rings my neck –
And lips that sang are mute and dumb,
And my spirit is like an infected wound
And the world is like a prison cell.
My esoteric learning's been submerged
And washed away by suffering's flood.
I ask for joy as if for alms,
But not a mite is in the cup.
Remember, oh! how in that infinite ocean
Among the spirit suns we surged,
How we lost our wings in the hurricane,
And for but an instant descend into the pits of
darkness Into the space of night and winter everlasting,
Oh, heal the one who stands upon the brink.

XIII
"Oh, heal the one who stands upon the brink!" –
I said, and a transparent beam of fire from
The center of creation entered my skull,
Joining for an instant different spaces.
And in glory and brightness my dear angel,
In light of everlasting day,
Came into dimming consciousness,
And her clear voice awakened me:
"Beloved mine, my spouse, my faithful friend,
Let once again your lyre sound beneath the sun
To wake the sleeping and to heal the sick!"
And by coming from those sparkling ethers,
You returned both light and earthly joy to me
By laying on of tender slender hands.
85
XIV
By laying on of tender slender hands
She awakened me today,
Death's year completed now its mournful round
With a sonnet cycle on her grave.
I look around: the meadow green is blooming,
A field of grain is growing, strengthening,
And my enlivened spirit thirsts for flight
Towards zenith, towards luminaries bright.
And wings once severed grow again,
Again a singer – I, and not a mournful priest,
Hunched sadly over without strength.
I wait for life to say at last
What goal the Great Reaper might have
In leaving wilted stubble touched with rot.
13 march – 24 july 1988
***
Oh, no! my verses will not resurrect You! –
Experience much deeper than mine is needed here,
Which do not know even the gods,
Who inhabit human shrines.
Oh, no! my verses will not resurrect You.
Needed here – the rhythm of Orpheus' forgotten mantras,
For Rhyme is just a little fairy, –
Her worlds are sunsets and an orchard overgrown.
But I create not verses, but mantras,
In them there are no sunsets or cherry blossoms,
The terrible, dark, secret Rhythm of the Manifest
Pulses, breathes and vibrates in them.
And behind the sonnet's frame I hear
Your steps, that were so ever light.
21 june 1989
***
To a youthful planet – distant and desired,
Through winds of death and over difficult terrain
He went star-stepping with audacious tread,
His footsteps are illumined out in space.
To childish laughter of an insane shaman
He was torn to pieces by dumb mobs
Burning with crooked, blunted beliefs
And thrown down at the fool's feet.
Black unicorns were streaming to
A greenish and foreboding moon.
The planet lay in child-like sleep,
Not knowing sadness or disturbance.
Only a young priest on the church's wall
Cried and wept over the murdered god.
1982
***
The Son of Heaven – Light and the Good he brought,
But he was fooled by his taste for stars.
He lost the last contesting,
Leaving but a shining trace in endless black.
The priests of other lovely young planets
Kept watch from towers to see his fall.
Midnight watches interrupting
"God is dead!" they said.
Why did he tread through starry fields
Shattering earthly structures in his wake?
Earth loved him and awaited him,
But he chose the sorrowing and suffering path.
He fell into an abyss, burning his wings,
Like a torch of death.... No! Like an awareness ray!
1982
A ONE-WINGED BIRD

On the ocean's edge I stand – a one-winged bird,

A sunny wind blows, and stars call me to flight.
But I feel cold inside, fearing a hurricane's scar,
And neither stars, nor songs, nor work bring joy.
We flew in space, through waves and tide.
Our bodies passed through matter as through cloud.
"Let's fly through a star, to vanquish, to open," –
We said to each other and opened our wings.
White and red sparkling marked our flight,
It followed the line of a magnetic arc....
I'm a one-winged bird, I have lost my pair,
And sadly look on at others' happy flight.
What do I wait in this world?....On the ocean's edge
I stand...
Oh, my flight, oh, life, you leave... good bye
then... Hosannah...
1988
95
PREEXISTENCE

I am dissolved in water, grass, the woods,

But nearing is the appointed hour of my coalescence.
Non-being bores me, as might a dull party,
I feel a new day of creation coming.
In all my scattered parts
Awakening is bubbling and ripening.
In my рге-existent hours
I have a premonition of time.
I preconceive the river's quiet lapping,
The cherry blossom petals' falling,
The touch of a young woman's gentle hand,
The words of love that I will hear.
I sense the sun as do young shoots
Preparing to pierce a roof of ice.
7 june 1985
THE GOAL SYNDROME

***
Into the space of sleep glass footprints
Make their way. Mesmermized by silence
Lies the earthly vastness. In premonition of catastrophe
The whole material cosmos clings to me as if to Noah.
In that strange, fantastic garden,
Where our first ancestor gathered fruits,
I called on God, raving, uninhibited,
Adjuring that catastrophe be stopped:
"Oh, Father, hark! Creations's end is near.
Through our ignorance and by our own fault
The poisoned planet cowers,
The Star of Bitter Fate hangs overhead!"
And thus I heard the answer sound:
"To Satan I have handed all the suicidals."
1982
MENE, TEKEL, FARES
(counted out, weighed, apportioned)

I sense in dreams catastrophe approach:

My body grows into a darkened plain,
And on my breast form footprints by the thousands
Mixing blood and earth together....
Into the caves and crevices of blackened hills
A human mass flowed through me.
The flowing stopped. They hid deep down in burrows
In agony of dissolution that presages death.
In settlements once lived in dogs are howling
Of death, revenge and punishment,
Nostrils tingle from the bitter smell of fires,
And night arises. Clocks strike terribly.
And under poisoned drops of dew
A sign glitters: "Mene, Tekel, Fares."
1982
102 103
***
When things go badly, when the year is hard,
To speechless gods you raise your prayers,
Or else you curse accursed fate,
Or resort to magic.
All this for nought. Seek within the source
Of failures on your struggling path.
Doff your mask before the inward judge,
The hand of fate is never blind –
You've chosen a dangerous, slippery way,
That leads to schisms and decay.
You've stirred up dirt and dregs in the ocean of life,
You sowed the seeds of strife abroad.
You figured to fool the Truth of Life –
Then wherefore do you seek mercy from fate?
27 november 1985
SONNET OF ONE WHO WORKS
ONLY FOR SELF

With great difficulty I built a house,

Beautiful, strong, spacious and light,
But what it took a year to build
Was ruined by an avalanche in an hour.
I planted a lovely orchard in a valley
And waited for its fruits to satisfy my hunger,
But then the north winds came one day
And frost and hail destroyed what I had planted.
I raised my hands to heaven asking
Why is it punishing me blindly,
Hadn't I worked hard, not skimping on effort,
But with absurd and poor results?
And as it tore my work apart, the wind howled:
"But you were working only for yourself".
1983
SONNET ABOUT PAIN

Just as the stone of fully ripened fruit

Must break in two in death's agony,
That new life may be born beneath the sun, –
So pain and joy travel together.
They coexist – as light and shadow,
They are born of one and the same source,
They are two halves of one single whole,
As cold and warmth, as night and day.
If you could keep your mind and heart
In wonderment forever,
You'd greet your pain without upset
And would not bend beneath your thoughts.
Don't put salt on your heart's own wounds,
But bow down in amazement before your pain.
1983
***
By play of Fate, by will of destinies
We moved upon the future in formation,
And full of hate we now sow our bitter bread,
And full of anger ever build our casemates.
We are lightless, blinded,
Executioners are called heroes,
A gloomy vault built upon the dead bones is called
"A humanitarian social structure".
An absurd collection of bigoted dogmas
Has brought us to a tragedy-filled collapse;
That temple our ancestors with difficulty created
We transformed into a hill of ash, singing all the while.
Stomped apart is our Russia – our native home,
And archetypal fear holds us fast.
1 december 1989
PARABLE OF ONE WHO SOWS ROCKS

Joyous laughter sounds until the morning,

Mowers and reapers are going through the field,
Their songs rise up and faces beam
Of people who have sown good seed.
The earth was generous and prolific
Repaying hard labor a hundred fold –
With tall, ripened, golden wheat.
I guess it's time for me to harvest, too.
I gulp the air with greedy gulps,
Not finding what I came to find.
Right here one time with curse and whistle
I flung out rocks in sweeping strokes.
And here the harvest of that thoughtless act –
I stand alone amidst the barren cliffs.
1981
CONFESSION OF A TRANSGRESSOR

I lived in pride, holding all in scorn,

I thirsted for riches, power, fame.
The sins of turning traitor, murder, sacrilege,
Were not beneath me. I focused solely on the target.
I stomped across the Day's Commandments
And the goal, like a fortress, yielded – at my mercy.
But at that moment of success a clang went through
me –
And my soul shattered like a mirror.
Rewards – a tragic twist, a revenge upon me –
Showered on my breast and shoulders,
But my soul's peace lay at my feet in dust.
In throes of agony at death I cried:
Oh, God, oh God .... And God replied:
"You'll fix the mirror in the fires of hell".
1982
WHO THE STRINGS HAS SUNDERED

The night departs. The heavens fill with light.

Lodged in their burrows a hundred twins of mine
In stillness sleep, like seeds, like spores,
And they all dream the self same dream.
It's only I – the standard broken and discarded –
Who screams into the night, jabbing my brain with spurs.
I stopped being part of that diaspora, infringed
Into the world of people, whose name is Obeisance.
Funny dolls and liars pitiful,
Who do not see the trembling of the strings
Above the flat moon decoration.
You will be drawn from sleep as from a box,
So that obediently, gaily, timidly
You dance beneath the Devil's hand.
1983
PARABLE OF A KITE

A kite flew up and felt as if

It were a space a bird, free
At the pinnacle of being, sailing
Through the never ending cycles of fates and shillings.
Just the dreadful, unrelenting cord
Connected it with all the past,
And the past all seemed so banal.
To bгеак thе cord! – and even deny memory!
A snap of the cord – like music to the ears ....
Freedom!.....And smash against the firmament.
The kite – now merely paper – lay in dust.
It enviously watched a fly.
You who try to soar to spiritual horizons –
Don't cut the living cord from Earth.
1982
THE DEAF

The saddened eyes of other worlds

Out of the depths of space and without ceasing
Are watching how criminally without reason,
We are destroying our fragile home.
Above the pale ashes of nuclear conflagrations,
Above the telling glow where corpses lie,
That clarion call is sounding, calling, crying,
That troubled voice from other worlds.
But we don't hear the loud, the awful call
Through the drumbeat of battle,
Through the noise of clown-politician speeches,
Pouring forth the trills of mendacious words.
Mesmerised, the countries stare
As the Pied Piper plies his tune.
22 may 1985
THE HERO'S STAR

The sea burned dry. Even the copper-colored sun

Changed course to illuminate the battle.
But I've come through the grind and whine and howling
To the shining star. To my Victory I've come!
At my feet proud nations now lie in fragments;
Ancient temples have turned into gray ruins,
And the wind pushes before it a gaseous fog
Along the dead valley's floorof sand.
My hand still grips the blaster's stock,
But my titanium armour – how heavy it's become....
Star of mine, how sad your setting
Beyond the black and endless ocean!....
Star of mine .... Love of mine .... Hosanna ....
Oh, cursed be your final gaze!
31 december 1988
124
***
Yolk like the sun trembles in a rut,
The water ripples beneath a fresh breeze,
A fly is grooming its black lilliputian trunk,
And tender sour grass is greening all around.
Upon the shore – there is a cosmic flower.
t transforms into a bird at night
And in amazement looks at faces long and long,
Stepping into foreign time as if into a current.
To what is this strange world aspiring,
So varied in its shapes and monads,
Whose crown has pushed into the living ethers –
A vital sprout within the cosmic garden?
It has become a polygon and shooting range,
And a great herd racing towards the abyss.
1982
THE GOAL SYNDROME

A. Sh. and G. Sh.

Striving for a goal is much
more constraining than realizing it.
Gautama Buddha

I
As a deaf and eyeless worm gnaws through a fruit,
Making a tunnel through the rounded body,
So an ancient illness – striving for a goal –
Has gnawed at proud Spirit for millenia.
The Fke World has gone out for people's eyes,
All things besides the goal have faded.
Trained from the cradle to hearken to the goal
Our hearing now is deaf to all but goal.
Intelligence gets weaker, day passes after day,
Bogged down in tension and commotion,
It cannot flare with new enlightenment,
Cannot ignite with Cosmic Fire.
Moment by moment life is now consumed
By this affliction of the planet – the goal syndrome.
130 131
II
And so the night comes, on the heels of a busy day.
Didn't get done... Couldn't begin... Didn't have time...
Not rightly we are going, and in the wrong direction, –
We are not living but only striving towards a goal.
Our striving toward a goal whips us, as a lash
Across our backs, and from childhood for many
An ancient, cruel cry rings in our ears:
"Anything goes, the goal justifies the means!"
Striving toward a goal is deforming the world:
When the goal looms before us as if in a gun sight,
The world becomes a shooting range,
Where nothing matters save the goal.
Meaning and Essence are not in goal achievement,
The Way has much more meaning than the goal!
132 133
III
In unconscious wandering, as in a tunnel,
Afraid of blowing out the burning candle,
For many years I sought my path,
Free of striving toward a personal goal.
The rains came down and blizzards drove.
In waist-high muck, in snow up to my chest
I trod and trod. Yet not a step could take.
My nerves and tensions beat like a bell of doom.
A daring mind I grew through study,
Years I gave to asceticism and to work,
But I could not rid myself of bitter thoughts
And did not learn the law of my own nature.
I wandered lost, morose and sad,
And saw only empty, starless skies.

IV
One time I asked a wise one –
During a frank exchange at midnight hour –
About the most important, the most sacred,
About what I did not know unto the end.
"Oh, tell me, Teacher, how to find one's path
In the great chaos of existence?
How does one learn the truth, the essences
Of creation's processes, events?"
Said he: "The ways of knowing are many,
But mere are none worn and ready.
Study, work, poetry and yoga
Each go their own way seeking light.
And which the path for you to take?
Query your heart – you'll find the answer there."

V
In silent stillness without words
I attended to my heart,
I stopped time for but a moment but could feel
How the roots of desire and fear dried up.
And in a blank wall I saw a door.
I opened it. And creation's secrets
Like flowers opened to me in my own country.
And my awareness focussed upwards.
And I entered now the cosmic ethers
And came to know in my now opened consciousness,
How creation's swirling point
Sails through the now disintegrating world.
And all my striving tumbled down
As did the golden idol from its feet of clay.
30 december 1985
THE TEACHER

SONNET ABOUT A TRUE TEACHER

The Earth is rich in ancient wisdom,

And ways of knowing – colorful and varied.
Along them to the temple of true knowledge
Seekers are guided by their teachers:
One teacher teaches how to be simple,
Another – how to follow art's example,
A third proclaims that faith is All,
Comparing reason to confusion.
But a real and true teacher
Leads in a very different way,
And students enter wisdom's temple
Not as spectators or inquirers.
But where is that wisest one who will
Aid our entrance to the temple that's within?
1981
RОERIСН
A Cycle of Sonnets
S. N. R.

I
Knowledge flows from many lands,
And river-like fills up the noosphere.
The waves are people: Gypsy, Negro, Indian,
Accountants, Couriers, Concierges.
This Great Ocean, this Living Field,
This Thinking Sphere pulsates:
As a shaman beats a drum, as an artist it creates –
Chimeras and chef-d'oeuvres are birthed.
But stars of light are in this living ether,
Whose mission is to fix this unseen flow:
They are the thinkers, prophets, poets,
Who've come to know more clearly than the rest
The essence underlying the spirit paths
Of Rus' and Europe, India, Tibet.

II
Of Rus' and Europe, India, Tibet
The cultures ripened many years.
Poet would take the place of murdered poet,
A czar would replace another czar.
The automobile was edging out the carriage,
And humans were on their way into the clouds
To greet the sun and truth and light
With perseverance of a youthful student.
It was in these years in Russia that a giant rose,
And wended his way along the path of knowledge.
Ideas and cultures of so many lands,
Ancient traditions, legends, myths,
And newly opened fields of knowledge
Flowed into his awareness-ocean
147
III
Flowed into his awareness-ocean
Currents of that energy of cosmos
With which the Path-Enlightened brahmin
Imbued his scintillating texts,
And Slavs and Scandinavians their sagas,
And ancient prophets what they wrote
In Bhagavad Gita, Bible and Q'uaran,
In prophesying timing and events.
The distant road sought out a traveler,
The depths of spirit sought a swimmer brave,
And teachers – one the testament to receive.
The mountain path sought an intrepid runner,
And beauty sought a prophet and creator,
A thinker, poet and a painter.
148
IV
A thinker, poet and a painter,
And also prophet, beauty found in him,
A guardian of the flame – World's Ruler found,
And love and goodness found in him a guide,
While empty aesthetic snobbism, ignorance,
Envy and darkness an opponent found,
And confusion barren, ever growing in the gloom,
A judge of harshness found in him.
To earth he downed the graven image
That called the spirit into crevices and crypts.
He went through storm and snow and fog,
Rock slides, land slides, and avalanches,
And as reward – all lean and light and new –
From greater heights this giant saw the world.

V
From greater heights this giant saw the world,
Entirely unlike the one the empty heads
Imagined in their salonic flurry
Or in proper parlors around decrepit lands.
Space there was in it, and Polovetsian form,
And sounds of Suzdal's bells,
Sunset above the steppe, a gray kurgan,
And sails, and banners of the land of Rus',
The form of an ascetic withdrawn from worldly cares,
A comet streaking across the sky
Above the glassy stillness of a pond,
A hand – bearing light up to the heights,
And clouds in battle all reared up
In flashings of the cosmic light.

VI
In flashings of the cosmic light
Each quantum in his paintings quivers:
The mountain dawn has its own sound –
Cold – like a diamond blue,
Its own – a comet tearing through the night,
Their own – the clouds from wild distant lands,
Its own – the flame-bright silhouette,
Their own – Varangian and Slavic ships.
Within his canvasses – bugle and drum,
Reed-pipe, sitar, flute, horn and lyre,
The timpani asounding from afar –
Are all tones of a colorful clavier.
In the orchestra of images and colors
His artistry rings out as if an organ.

VII
His artistry rings out as if an organ,
And births a sense among the people
Of falsity of boundaries between the nations
And of a striving bright for union:
There is but one live, mighty ocean,
Its movement expressed in every wave,
The Whole in every part – one intelligence
In this entire great Galactic flow.
Cosmic nights and cosmic dawnings
Now greet our ships. Our rockets
Pierce the vault of the blue heaven,
The trace of humans lies in cosmic dust.
And out in space observing the Earthrise,
We look through Roehrich's eyes.

VIII
We look through Roehrich's eyes
On peaks of blue and ever youthful hills,
Who've donned in dawning's glow of red
Majestic costuming of clouds,
On signs and rituals so strange,
Preserved among us since the ancient times,
On prophecy of battle between the dark and light,
All seen as rubbish by the arrogant and stupid.
He asked questions and found answers
And gave as gifts treasures of apprehension,
As on his canvas a gray-haired ascetic
Does as he bows over the jewel of seeking.
Along the universe's sacred paths
He was one of those who lit the lights.

IX
He was one of those who lit the lights
Upon the steep and secret paths of knowledge
That Tibet preserved for generations
In its legends, rituals, traditions.
He learned the meaning of ceremonies
And signs, and found teachings that were lost,
By casting off empty ideas and lies,
That grow upon the tree of knowing.
By breaking through the canon's husk,
He returned the cosmic color back to Earth.
By overcoming barriers and obstacles,
Having trod the difficult great mountain path,
He expressed the essence in his paintings
Of the world's law of transformation.

X
Of the world's law of transformation –
The law of beauty ever growing –
He bore the light over rocky slopes
Into the endless crevices of darkness.
Millions in this world awaited this illumination,
Having wearied of evil and confusion,
Of the Black Dragon's ancient rule,
Of emptiness and separation.
The mountain's light lit up the crevices
And on his canvases took form
The knowledge bringing joy and light.
For those who walk the paths of knowledge
Of consciousness' deep and sacred secrets,
His beacon burns for all these many years.

XI
His beacon burns for all these many years,
It flickers in the clean and austere mountain temple,
And guides all those who seek the light
Amidst mental confusion, rubbish, dirt.
From pinnacles it's easier to see the dawn,
To see that clouds won't cover up the sun,
That over graying mountain ridge has run
The Steed of Joy, bearing upon his back – the flame.
And so, leaving behind our dachas and salons,
That hinder us as if they were nutshells,
We start our journey up the mountainside,
But our steps slip into the chasm,
While the way, narrow as a razor's edge,
Gets lost beyond the curve of the horizon.

XII
Gets lost beyond the curve of the horizon,
In blue mists hovering around the peak,
The dangerous path along the canyon's edge,
That leads to Shambalah – the world's heart.
Newcomers from the blue Orion,
In order to save life, gasping in its noose,
Built up a fortress of the Law of Stars
On Earth, who'd lost her Starry Course.
There is no road that carries gloom and evil
Into the Zone within that unseen field,
And Judases and spies must fall away,
But burning beacon-like with heart that's pure
Is the starry sign – calling us to heights –
Left by our Teacher on the slopes.

XIII
Left by our Teacher on the slopes,
Burns the sign whose name is Beauty.
It enters the souls of millions
Out of the depths of his eternal canvas.
And moans, complaints wane into silence,
And our lips strike up a shining hymn,
And legions, not mere crowds, are stirred,
And fear and darkness disappear.
May Beauty be our greatest goal
In our struggle for the coming years!
May her bright and lively starry light
Illuminate for future generations,
In their ever difficult ascent,
Each step that leads up to the flaming peak.
170 171
XIV
Each step that leads up to the flaming peak
Is noted and reflected in the teachings,
As by a lens that focuses the light
And as experience obtained in me ascent.
There is an esoteric testament
That guides a mighty movement,
Its never ending goal – awakening,
Its ascending way is transformation.
A titan's brought it from beyond gray peaks,
Leaping across the mountainous divides,
This great son of the Varangians and Slavs.
In Teachings of the Light and Agni Yoga
Many paths are blended to a single goal,
Rivers of knowledge out of many lands.
173
XV
Rivers of knowledge out of many lands:
Native Rus', India, Tibet –
Flowed into his awareness7ocean,
A thinker, poet and a painter.
From greater heights this giant saw the world
In flashings of the cosmic light,
His artistry rings out as if an organ,
We look through Roehrich's eyes.
He was one of those who lit the lights
Of the world's law of transformation,
His beacon burns for all these many years,
Each step that leads up to the flaming peak
Left by our Teacher on the slopes
Gets lost beyond the curve of the horizon.
4–12 july 1986
THE STALKER

I
In flow of ancient darkness he was striding.
From out the crowd one heard: "We're in the light!
We're on the path of Goodness and of Beauty!
Our path is as a comet tail sparkling bright!"
But the sky was turning darker still,
And the swamp was slapping underfoot,
Roots creaked into the dirt of passing days
And the mendacious words of all iscariots.
This slippery path – it was to him repugnant,
All tramped by fools playing the farce,
Though he had walked it many bitter years.
Off he threw deceit's most heavy dream,
He took a step and came out from the fog,
And saw at last the light of stars.

II
But the crowd went on. And he, remembering sky,
Returned again to masses blind and gray,
And with a gesture made soft bread of rocks,
And with a word repealed falsehood and vice.
And he said to those upon this path:
"Oh, brothers you have chosen the wrong way!
Your dogmas are all falsehoods, your gods are false,
And pride is preventing you from turning around."
He firmly trod audacious strides,
And then he banished those who led,
And took their place as if a Stalker in the lead,
And those imbued with darkness trembled
And hope emerged in waiting hearts
For other skies and for another way.
181
III
And he sang out of distant starry lands,
Of warriors of Dawn and Fire,
Who, though submitting to both spats and wounds,
Preserve the Fire – living among us all the while.
He sang of wings of light in everyone's possession.
Wings tethered, "covered till the ripe moment.
Of wings that one day will unfold
And take us to those starry worlds.
The poet's words proclaimed the fire of life,
A halo pulsed about him as a flame,
And on his heels glowed forth the dawning light,
And people, catching the winged hymn,
Arose behind him higher, higher
On wings of Truth and Love and Light.
5–7 september 1985
SERMON'S END

A world shaken by the sermon falls silent.

The seed is cast and grows within each soul.
But people wait, keep silent, don't depart,
And lift hearts upward into the vital ether.
Upon new faces now new features form.
And in their hearts no anger or defects.
And each with smiles sends the Prophet
Energies of Goodness and of Love.
In gratitude the old priest said:
"God's Prophet, bright and wise your soul!.."
The Prophet smiled and answered so:
"You really think it I in truth who spoke?
I only read what's written in our souls.
I, just as you, received the words evoked."
1983
FIRESEED

ТHE ТREE

At the trail's apex of my days I stand,

The clouds roll by, the years, they pass away,
And on the slopes – stumps of charred remains,
Battles thundered here and trouble moaned.
Deep mighty roots I grew into a crag of rock,
I do not bend or sway when winds are howling.
I'm like an old soldier at a festive ball,
Funny and plain, unloved perhaps, .... so be it.
But when winds trumpet loudly over the land
And bonfires of green branches rise up to the sky,
In your memory sure will loom this hill
With charred trunk still standing at the top.
For this reason I stand, so forbidding, so alone.
For this reason I bend not when winds howling come.
1971

A SONNET ON VANITY
L. G.

"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," –

Disciples exhorting, the prophet said.
Its echo thundered through the land
Reverberating still millenia anon.
The wise, the fool, pragmatacist and poet,
In heat of battle or in place of rest,
Come variously to this same awareness:
"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."
"But isn't there something eternal
On this the vainest of all planets?" –
I asked. And from subconsciousness arose
The only possible and right reply:
"Do good, both love and knowledge sow,
The rest is vanity of vanities you know."
1981
FIRESEED
A CYCLE OF SONNETS
P.K.I.

I
To keep it ever blooming, ever burning,
Generations of cosmic wanderers,
Bore the Fiery Flower down through time,
And Brok – the wind of thought – was in their sails.
Ages of struggle, patience, work passed by,
The journey is ended, me cycle is completed,
And a place of incarnation found –
The fiery living spiral current.
Raising illumined face to this light source,
And bearing in both palms the Fiery Seed,
The great Fire Sower penetrated
The strange and inert space7time realm –
As Reason once entered the tribe of apes,
And Lotus in the Earth's parterre was planted.

II
So Lotus in the Earth's parterre was planted, –
A different, strange, imperfect cosmos,
Where glaciers slowly crept from mountain tops,
Crushing buildings, snapping down the pines,
While from the valleys rolled an angry cry,
A herd of monkeys cross-eyed looked at how
Their cousin fashioned for himself an ax
As woman set about to comb her braids.
A battle waged for eons on the Earth –
The hostile world rebelled and took revenge.
It destroyed the wretched hamlets,
While reason, full of power, created them again.
But now into the Fireseed crawled in – no,
Rotted in – the eyeless worm of death.

III
Into the Fireseed the eyeless worm of death
Plunged deep its poisoned lance, and then
Across the Earth was heard this message hoarse:
"Is it mine? Yes, mine... Mine! Mine! All Mine!!!"
A slow decay crept over all the world:
My house, my wife, and my spear, too ....
To this one universal truth a yearning,
Not someone else's, but only mine!
"I" bloated like a great big bag of pus,
Grew like an immense chimera:
"I'm center of the Universe, everyone a debtor mine."
"I" even entered into the Symbol of faith.
So the ego demon entered
Into the noosphere of sinful, naked Earth.

IV
So entered Consciousness on sinful, naked Earth
The poison of the cosmic worm,
And pain and cries into the cosmos issued
From the devil-poisoned monad.
Too weak to make the face of nature glow,
Awareness meekly moulders like a votive candle,
It births not light, only a chilling cast,
Barely seen beneath the covering of soot.
Not creativity, but everywhere destruction
Consciousness sows upon the ailing Earth,
Where billions writhe in suffering,
Clinging like a mold to the planet.
They dance the death dance on the ashes,
Fulfilling not their destiny.
198 199
V
Fulfilling not its destiny –
To spark the Great Light in our Galaxy.
The planet sleeps and sees a dream,
Beneath the ash the flame is mouldering many years.
The wise Cosmos looks on this regretfully
As on one of the chosen planets
Generations pass as if of shadows
And night is endless, – far away the dawn.
The blind are led by a sightless guide,
The path loops round, the testaments forgotten,
Earth hurtles to an unknown dead end,
Teachers are beaten, crucified.
Ruled by a bigoted and blind elite
Spirit, sickened, flushed with fever, then faded.
200 201
VI
Spirit, sickened, flushed with fever, then faded,
As a tender southern lotus wilts,
Brought to a northern flower garden,
Cold as a mist-filled swamp.
So turning its pale face to the source of light
Spirit put forth and ear of grain, empty and wan.
And rose from this a thinking reed beneath the sun.
But of it came just rustle and not Logos.
This product of mutation and degeneration,
Knows well the Starry Path within its heart.
Premonitioning eternal bloom,
It chases dirt, confusion out of mind.
For seven thousand years persisting, seeking meaning
Upon the shores of cosmic currents.
202 203
VII
Upon the shores of cosmic currents
There is a field of ancient blue planets,
Where the gray stalk – alienation – is weeded out
And there is no pain or separation;
Where Spirit carries on the great struggle
To win the light that changes space
And brings all Chaos to defeat,
And the golden dawn comes nearer.
While we, sending all our energy into a cul-de-sac,
Erect useless fortifications out of matter,
In which decay and shouting reign supreme.
Listening to nuclear explosions,
Admiring the feverish sunset,
The thinking reed withers and decays.

VIII
The thinking reed withers and decays
Behind the tinsel of a glistening facade.
A colonnade of sparkling rock
Obscures a dead end, small and gray.
"The mountain top is not to be attained,
High the barrier and dangerous the way,
Forget the mountains, let us drop our sights
And keep to streets all black with soot!" –
So cries the empty-headed one,
And praises sound all over in response.
Pied Piper plays upon his pipe
And leads a great herd to the precipice.
The autobahn winds underfoot –
The Path of Consciousness is certainly not this.
207
IX
The Path of Consciousness is certainly not this,
As mendacious sages picture it,
Vainly attempting to shackle Spirit
While focusing upon the beauty of the chains.
For seven thousand years the educated asses
Have pushed wicked untruth on the masses.
Alleluia was traded in for Hail! All Hail,
The child of God – for a hawker of superstition.
And in this world of suffering and grief
Where actions return as though boomerangs,
The wise have put on cloaks of apathy,
In order to escape the wounds and suffering.
Their hearts keep drumming:
"Awake, go forth upon the path of knowing self."
211
X
Awake, go forth upon the path of knowing self,
Only this leads spirit out of ancient gloom,
And – knowledge reaping grain by grain –
Persevere in labor as the golden bee.
This is a path of wandering unending
And not the straight flight of an arrow,
Piercing structures of the world we're in.
And every step is shackled as in chains
By malicious smirkings of the fools,
By falsity of morals, by fashion and by laws,
By family, milieu, traditions of the ages,
By errors in the genetic code. You're shackled
Even by your nature – from animals derived –
From these fetters come and free your mind.
213
XI
From these fetters come and free your mind
And go forth bravely to the victory you want.
Nor pain, nor fear, nor graying at the temples
Will stop this effort once begun.
The Ancient Starry Way of Gods is shining,
Knowing neither boundary nor limitation,
The ever youthful call sounds above the earth –
Go – and surrender fully to it.
Cast off all doubt, all wavering, all fear,
All wish to turn away or sit this out,
Learn freedom, too, from all desires,
Forget the easy goals – they're false –
Then you will manage to set forth your path
Even in this so complicated world.

XII
In this so complicated world
And in eternal time will Earth go forth
Upon the shining path of love and knowledge,
Upon which trod her mentors, teachers.
By giving karma a new foundation,
By not bowing to gods and not praying
About the offerings of life beyond the grave,
We'll firmly take our place behind the wheel.
We'll go from blind and sorry torpor,
In which the worm and mold find comfort,
Both to searching and to daring,
Giving intelligence its wings through energy.
And quaffing our eternal thirst,
A quantum of consciousness will open lotus-like.
217
XIII
A quantum of consciousness will open lotus-like,
Paralysis and dissolution interrupting,
And will go forth along enlightenment's own way
Where our older brother, who has learned the field,
awaits.
Without destruction, without battles for success,
Without detonators, without plastic patches
We'll cross right over structures of the universe;
We'll transform the cosmos into a flowering garden.
The Starry Path of Gods will then appear,
Which slumbered in Australopithecus' genes,
Calling the savage out of ages' gloom,
Awakening the souls of Aztecs and Hindus;
Our consciousness will then emerge –
A million-petalled bloom.
219
XIV
Into a million-petalled bloom
I wanted to transform the wan stalk of grief,
That suffers a multitude of chains
Shackling its roots and bending down its stem.
Ignoring blows and spats, as in the roaring heat
Of a furnace, I smelted a thought within my heart,
To express in words this ancient call,
Sounding more loudly and insistently to me.
And then at once new sight burst forth,
A blinding film fell off my eyes,
And my enlightenment poured forth in words.
Remember their melody, for it
Will help to waken sleepers out of slumber
To keep them ever blooming, ever burning.
221
XV
To keep it ever blooming, ever burning,
The Lotus in the Earth's parterre was planted.
The eyeless worm of death entered the Fireseed
Upon the naked, sinful Earth.
Fulfilling not its destiny,
Spirit, sickened, flushed with fever, then faded.
Upon the shores of cosmic currents
The thinking reed withers and decays.
The Wondrous Path of Consciousness
is not at all like this –
Awake, go forth upon the path of knowing self.
From these fetters come and free your mind.
Even in this so complicated world
A quantum of consciousness will open lotus-like
As if a million-petalled bloom.
9–19 july 1985
JOURNEY OCEANWARD
A POEM

I
Once upon a time I found myself
In clouds of lightninged sky.
I fell in rain upon a field of wheat –
A fellah blessed my downward flight.
I flowed toward dry and thirsty roots
To fill the grain and make it strong,
The sun and wind dried me out of the earth;
I fell apart and circled back up to the clouds.
I had just started on my thorny path.
I had not filled a glass with dew.
I had not soaked the bosomed earth,
No prana given to the thirsting grain.
But as I vaporized I understood:
Life's essence means: Eternal Ocean -me- all One.

II
The thought of IT, which entered into me,
As if a mantra and a cosmic force,
Brought into me the energy of fire
And sent me as an arrow on my course.
In soggy swamps, in heat of the equator,
In peaceful snows, at battle's eye,
I remembered my Ocean source
And oft repeated as hymn and prayer:
"Oh, Ocean! Ancient parent mine!
My spirit rises, for our union thirsting!
I'm flowing to you, a yearning swimmer – I,
Seeking freedom to attain in You.
Oh, give me strength for movement swift
My Ocean – alpha and omega mine!"
228 229
III
As hail then upon a field I fell –
My impact broke an unripe ear –
Though wizened earth accepted me,
A hoarsened voice my downward flight now cursed.
I traveled into dark and deep
Where memory of light is lost,
Into that dense and shadowed land
The planet keeps secret under living crust.
I flowed among the nether dews,
Fully immersed in cosmic prana.
I soaked in metals, iodine and salt,
Astringent methane molecules.
But I broke through this granite mass
And Oceanward again I flowed.
230 231
IV
But the stormy thrust of the most obstinate of rivers
Was stopped by the angry might of a dam,
And so we ended our freedom run.
We rotted in the swampy slime.
And in this land of lifeless, false restraint,
Built nonetheless according to a plan,
I slept and saw the Ocean in my dreams
And hoped perhaps a miracle would come,
Perhaps the slogans on the marshy shores
Would suddenly fill up with life,
Our waves fill up with joy, abandon,
And our depths – be cleared of silt.
But our deep was quiet as a grave
And into our spirits cold terror crept.
232 233
V
We strained and strained to shake, to break,
Destroy, annihilate the wall
And to set off on our great journey,
Churning exultant foam upon the waves.
Now here, now there we beat into the shores
In desperate moans and splashings,
But guards, as if their basest enemies,
Ringed us with concrete higher, higher.
Among ourselves we were of different forms
In count of molecules and kinetic energy,
And in viscosity and in accomplished work,
In our ability to love and to dissolve;
But here I understood: earth is our common home
And our strength lies wholly in uniting.

VI
And so it happened that the impulse of our
gathered might
Broke through the lock of our concrete trap
And washed away the guards on the red towers,
And sent us journeying again towards Oceanic One.
I thought I'd done my turn at being tested
With this escape from prison,
That I would no longer know evil, darkness,
New incarnations, or sufferings.
But out of this blue river freely flowing,
Rolling boulders at its depths,
By machinations of some evil hand
I was sucked into conduits of the Underworld.
Narrow and bitter they were, and
Joined to the Dark Baptismal Font.
237
VII
And so I flowed out through an open faucet,
But with me stayed peace, love and faith,
For hadn't I in just such catacombs
Saved the early Christians from death?
But not our Crucified was carved
On concrete wall of this secret subterrain.
Here people robed in snowy white
Assiduously bowed to Satan.
The bubbles burbled up above the vats
And every atom in us trembled from the heat,
But I was pure and light within.
And suddenly I felt myself with wings
And in the light of fading evening glow
Rose into a sunset cloud of snow.
239
VIII
But those of us who were impure or heavy,
And those of us who doubted their own flight,
Filled up the font – that is, the cauldron –
For the Apocalyptic Dragon.
A thick armour divides these from
The thirsty roots and waiting fields.
They serve as billet for the Fire of Dark,
Their fate is sad, and terrible their end.
They lost their freedom spirit,
They're now imprisoned in the belly of the bomb,
Their day is night, their daily life – all lies.
They're guarded in the concrete-covered catacomb –
Designed for other planetary hecatombs –
By the Dark and Awful Lord of Flies.
243
IX
Now in the form of a snowflake I fell on
a mountain top,
Hoping to rest after my adventurings.
Within me shone the magic vision of
Another multimeasured space.
Within my crystals light was shining
And prana pulsed within me slowly.
And not a speck of earthly dirt was in me
As in icicles of comets wandering in space.
But the desire for the eternal purity of snow
Gradually overcame me – and all of us –
And we rejected work and straggle and achievement
As a path that leads into the chaos pit.
And as we did this – on our snowy outlines
As if a pox – now emerged our spots of dark.

X
Playing with fantastical design,
We lay beyond both count and measure,
Covering the hills with a cold, white layer
Our weight augmenting and increasing.
We hovered – ominous – above the village,
Whose inhabitants did not know the danger.
And then one day with a low and mighty roar
We buried their orchard and their homes.
In that horrific moment, being plunged
Into destruction of the fates and lives of others,
I stopped dividing evil from the good.
I moved away from dualism's sword
And quietly – illumined – acknowledged
Determinism as the cosmic law.
247
XI
Since then, no matter where capricious,
Fickle karma has thrown me, –
In fetid pit or in a raging fire,
In hospital syringe or in an empty cup –
Nor blood nor poison sully me,
Both pure and flowing I've remained,
I've manifested time and time again,
I've fallen down and to the clouds have risen,
And often sung: "Oh, ancient parent mine!
Of purity and constancy, oh symbol!
Oh, Ocean – You – beginning – You the End,
You wait till after many wanderings
Your wayward child, Your pilgrim, will at last
Enter your primary first formed space."
249
XII
And so again I flowed in a great river,
Past hamlets, cities, and then countries,
And heard the calls of seagulls from afar
About the soon approaching Ocean.
Great boats went past and one
Took me with it in a cistern
Into a land I did not know, into
A huge city full of fantasy and squalor.
And I was drawn into another round of trials:
In concrete caverns, plastic holes,
Amid brighter wonders than the Book of Kings,
And dumpings of synthetic garbage,
Amid vibrations of both shame and glory.
I flowed among the drops of medicines and poisons.

XIII
As I washed dirt – in sufferings and battles –
Off floors of hospitals, bordellos, eateries,
Off hands of addicts, murderers, and scoundrels,
Draining into dark oblivion down a pipe,
The fate of no one did I envy, no –
I knew that I am part of Ocean,
That even flow along a glass's bottom
Eventually, finally, will lead to You.
I sang again: "Oh, ancient parent mine!
My tired soul is thirsting for reunion!
I'm flowing to You, a longing swimmer,
To find at last within You liberation.
Oh, give me strength for swiftness in my flowing,
My Oceanic One – my Alpha and my Ending."

XIV
I wandered above the earth in spring,
Like a small cloud, a puff of glowing molecules,
Low was my spirit and for something waited,
For something only humans usually get.
The sun was rising from behind blue hills,
The edge of sky took on a rosy hue,
In their burrows slowly wakened fauna,
And youthful buds came slowly into bloom.
Suddenly a squall of beauty-fragrance
Pierced me as if a splinter or a spear.
I saw a wonder – and I fell
A dewdrop on a rose's leaves.
Such an amazing metamorphosis
I did not expect – I a swimmer of uncharted space.

XV
I, who wandered fearlessly in pitch black pipes,
Lay trembling on my dear one's breast.
And I fed the petals of her opened lips
With nectar of the Cosmos' prana.
So beautiful – she loved me
And offered me her fragrance sweet,
And I forgot the fetid smell of slime
And of the land by nitrates poisoned,
And sang again my hymn: "Oh, Ocean!
Oh, my source of life and joy and light!
You gift me with the wounds of loving
And the fantastic joy of answered love.
Love is that before which Lethe is powerless
As are hurricane, sand storm, decay and death."

XVI
But to our garden came a gray and lame old man,
Who had forgotten the narcotic spell of love,
And with his indifferent sweep of hand –
My Rose was cut. He heard neither prayer nor cry.
But I remained with my beloved.
In an inert crystal vase I stayed with her
And sang to her of love, and did not weep,
And did not desperately fall to earth.
With her I suffered and then waned,
And tore asunder all my earthly ties.
But we were spared the bitterness of parting,
And when decay but touched us lightly,
We made our way into the morning sky,
Crystal captivity lay behind us forever.
XVII
And so I completed the last cycle.
– Dipped up the last cup of my assigned karma,
Received my fate, my punishment, my prize,
The spiral of descents and flights and partings.
Now free of sufferings and desires,
Out of habit I remembered days of old,
And once again was ready for Icarus' flight
To sweeping clouds and sky. But then
Gone was the ancient world of yore
And I saw a very different world,
Where earthly was eternal – the everlasting, earthly.
And all there was – was Ocean alone,
Pulsating with Intelligence and Brahman,
And I, the swimmer, was in and with It always.

XVIII
Oh, ancient, ever youthful Oceanic One!
In tens of incarnations has my spirit known
The ways of Gods, Sand Grains, Drops, Lands,
The joy of flights and sadnesses of falling.
Through flickering fog for but an instant at a time
I see in forms, events and happenings
The play of Your infinite transformations:
You are Matter, You are Field, You – also Brahman.
Oh, Ocean – oh, alpha and omega mine!
Oh, symbol of eternity and constancy!
Your loyal child, Your wanderer, at last,
Having traversed the roads of endless wanderings,
Has entered now your very first formed space.
Receive me now, beloved Parent mine!
19 february – 18 march 1989
SPACE BIRDS

DIALOGUE BENEATH THE STARS

– Oh, look, beloved, at the vault of night!

Over yonder is the star where I was born.
– Beloved, look, around us is the land of Nod,
The place my people fought to death with foe.
– Beloved, hark, oh, hear the Hymn of Fire
Created by enwinged balladeers.
– Beloved, I will sing you couplets full
Of dark night rhythms and the angry day.
– Beloved, in my native land
Space Birds do not make such nests,
And joy does not have need for wine,
And there are no melodies so threatening,
so depressing.
Let us go, my love, give me your hand,
And I will teach you how to look at stars.
23 april 1989

DIALOG ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE

I
– Teacher, how amazing is your Flight.....
While I have stumps, not wings,
And I drag them night after night
Across flat squares all lying under dust.
– Teacher, where have you flown so many days,
What worlds, events and space did you traverse?
While I crawled ant-like up the mountainside,
Holy Mantras of the starry flight forgetting....
– Teacher, how did you recognize our poor world?
Without you it is now sanguine and somber
And karma has transformed into a wicked fate,
And three burdens have crushed Earth's Spirit down.
Wealth, Power, Fame they are by name
And wingless now Your prophet of before.9

II
– Oh, child mine, I wandered in those spaces where
A kind and saddened spirit rules.
In spaces where the birds of starless lands
Appear as flies crawling on glass.
So distant from the Field of Absolute
Their flat, two-measured worlds
That in my darker moments I could not believe
Either in Wings or even in the Mountain.
They cannot find the passage through
Into the world of three dimension. In apathy and sloth
They crawl around a ring – with this their goal,
And wisdom in their knowledge is as foam.
I lived in their dim shadowy world
Thrown by God's hand upon its shoals.
271
III
Their scholars, strategists and priests,
Who draw mendacious plans for World
And City in the two-dimensioned plane,
Are prideful as the ones in three dimensions.
And just as dull the city fathers,
And just as constant the commanders
In aim to cover earth with dotted lines,
And just the same the scoundrels flourish.
And "beauty" is a concept they possess,
As well as signs for "Absolute" and "love" and "time",
They even managed to squeeze in
– This tribe – the symbol for Eternal Cross.
But two dimensions weigh heavily upon them,
– They have no sign to signify the "Heights".

IV
Having come from other worlds
I carried in my soul the stamp of Flight,
And heard the holy call on High,
And unfurled folds of wings until I sweat.
I dreamt to waken them from two-dimensioned sleep
With fantastic myths about the other planets.
I spoke to them of shining suns
And of the joy of flying in the light.
The simple ones followed me up to the Top,
Hoping to fly if but for one brief moment,
But scholars, prison guards, and priests
Submitted me to tortures and pursuit.
And arrogant and well-fed fools
Unto my end betrayed me.
V
Their world had an Iscariot their own,
Their own Pilate, and Peter, their own Barabbas,
And their crowds taunted me the same
As to the scaffold they were dragging me.
Spread on the cross's plane I prayed
Over and over yet again
"Oh, enter them, oh, Vertical, enter their
flattened minds,
Your child is calling You, oh, High of Highs!...."
And when the tortures reached their limit,
The word came into me as if a mantra,
And every atom in my body suddenly sang out
With the vibration of the Cosmic Call.
And I broke loose from two-dimensioned bonds,
And I flew into another space.
279
VI
Now my flight is transformed into a ritual.
And with a constancy of texts in memory
The Pharisees of two-dimensioned space
Draw pedestals for me on planes.
While Height, the symbol that I birthed
In suffering, struggle, tortures on the cross,
Has come to adorn the gray memorials
On their graves and not at all their knowledge.
Their world crawls on. The places of their darkness
Give birth to night, decay, echoes of emptiness
Throughout the ethers of the world.
This two dimensioned world grows ever wider.
But I am glad that, like a spark, I gave this world
A myth – a story of the Child of Height.
281
VII
– Teacher, this flattened world has long been wit us:
It takes apart our universe.
From year to year horizons narrow,
And Your Fire is now almost gone.
Just look at present generations,
– Cruel as Attila's soldiers –
They fling their reason and their strength
In service of the rape of Mother Earth:
The ocean's covered with a dirty film,
The air is poisoned, birds are disappearing,
The genetic trap has sprung,
And hospitals now turn away the sick.
Nature is gasping under mortal wounds,
And on our faces trouble's shadow's flung.
283
VIII
Neither the good nor evil find mercy
In absurd world of pits and walls.
Even our dreams are dark and horror-filled –
Vapors of this earthly hell condensed.
Our life is absurd – as if a clownery,
And we – satanic marionettes.
Our dance leaves dirty tracks behind
For it is not the body's song, nor burning,
Not even movement, but decaying, as if an
Apocalyptic Steed has galloped over us.
What we call music is but agony, delirium:
Rhythm in tatters, with clang and hoot
It brainward creeps as if a two-dimensioned shade,
And brings with it decay and harm.

IX
Beloved, here I am, Your spouse, Your friend.
I reached, as Orpheus, the lands of Hades.
My quiet knock sounds underneath the vault:
It sounds of pain of parting, gentleness and hurt.
My verses call – they're full of strength and ailing,
They're new and dissonant as hybrids –
Crosses of sciences so newly minted, exact and dry,
With secret ancient wisdom of the Druids.
I made the Muse a tunic out of darkest cloth
nd led her into a passing, fragile world
Where stupor of wine will not overcome me.
Nor will the awful sound of pole-axe lure me, –
Let the battle rage and feast go on without me,
In anguish I have left the battle field.
287
X
Living in this absurd world of outer form,
We build and care for body only,
We erect cults around the stadium and court,
We eat and drink – no measure and no limit.
And our never dying Soul
Wanders like a beggar beneath the winds.
We rarely see the starlit Dipper
And accidentally we hear a church's hymns.
Our outer minds are habited to mental cud,
Its constant mental noise drowns out,
Deflects our Song of Soul.
Ever hurrying and ever counting,
We do not hear Soul's wordless plea
As if the Inner Ear should See.
290 291
XI
– Beloved Child, just take a look around:
Your world is covered with illusion like a net,
Your hands of wings are bound,
And joy is but a rare and accidental guest.
Beloved Child, recall again the Eternal Hymn
Your Soul sang once in other space,
And sing it now for others as you knew it then.
Once more awaken to your starry trace.
You were Apostle of the Light and Prophet
In a pure and ancient incarnation.
Go, fill with music of enlightenment
Columns of burning, first-born verses,
Announce the Final Battle wherein
Both falsity and vice will fall.
292 293
XII
Farewell, my child. The heavens darken
And shooting stars spark up the night;
Birds now nest up in their trees
And in the churches lights are lit.
Your Way lies through cyclone and gloom,
Through waves of separation and decay.
May you reach the Top upon this Mountain
And your steps find their way around the barriers.
Farewell, my child. The Flame still flickers,
The one you try to quell.
Now I must for a moment stay
In space beneath some other clouds
To be crucified by you in yet another birth,
And give you again – new born – the Way.
27 june – 1 december 1989
A DIALOG BEFORE FLIGHT

I
Teacher! I am but a human,
I pray to you on bended knee,
Though you have winged me specially for flight,
Allow me to live out my life on Earth.
I gave up everything: the golden calf,
The power of crown, balladic glory,
And walked Your way unto the end
With energy and firmness and endurance.
And now having completed this hard task
And having come through tens of incarnations,
My spirit is down in sadness and confusion,
The wings upon my back encumber me.
I know there is no forgiveness for one who turns away,
But I beg of You: allow me to remain on Earth.

II
In pridefulness unmeasured I assumed
That I had given up my bodily desires,
That I became a Galactic Bird – all knowing
Surrendering all to do the work.
I gazed from tower top upon the world
As if it were creation of another plane.
Neither battle, nor banquet affected me,
Neither passions, nor doubtings troubled me.
I figured I had drained life's glass,
– As in a forge my karma melted down –
That Earthly goal is meaningless and paltry,
That grief and sorrow are the way of Earth.
Oh, fool, I thought I'd pulled my roots,
Ready for flight. Then She appeared....
298 299
III
Said she: "I'm flying with you!"
She bought some rolls and chocolate,
Readying for Flight as if for strolling,
And the Great Passage and the Struggle up ahead.
She's in the flower of her strength and beauty
And no gaze is gentler or more passionate than hers.
It seems as though the outline of her wings
Her radiant raiment covers,
In her hands a flowerful bouquet,
Her frame so flexible and fine,
But in the Worlds and Spheres Beyond
She – who is so perfect here – is but a child,
Newly awakened and not knowing where to go.
There, Earth's wisdom is mere pitiful dust.
301
IV
Oh, gird your Spirit my beloved child,
And know that in the Noosphere's eternal field
This Flight was always meant for Two,
Who've found the Ancient Way of Trust and Love.
Now Love has filled you to your depths.
It is the Key of the Great Turning Point.
It is the Fire. And it alone is able
To give you wings.
There are regions out in Space where evil rules,
Where whirlwinds await the Universe's Birds.
Where flight is extremely difficult
Through eyes of night, afflictions, death.
Each one of you has but one wing
And, child mine, you cannot fly without each other.
23 april – 2 may 1989
A WORD ABOUT THE WORD

A SONNET ABOUT THE

WORD

I wanted to create – in God like fashion –

with a Word
New Eden, stars on milky ways, new worlds
In the Mesopotamia to come
And new Person – as symbol and summation.
I stopped ingesting verbal smog
From the industrial suburbs of speech.
Yet still I could not find the Word
Even in wigwams of barbarian tongues.
Bright rays of midday light did flow
From "beauty" – that Word filled with joy.
But next to it, like small change coins,
Mere "vanity" rang out in copper tones.
It was then I chose the sacred place of great poets
And bowed before "simplicity."
1982
***
You say that I've dreamed up a world,
Shining with fire in a sonnet cycle.
While real life is bedlam, ravings, and a shooting range
Where neither truth nor love nor light abide.
That fragile words cannot raise up
A dwelling out of mental dirt,
New luminous connections mere words cannot create....
I interrupt: "No, you are not right.
When the soul is peaceful in the deep of night,
In this time's wanderings new findings come to sight,
And husks of common words take flight.
Then I catch hold of the ethereal thread,
Knowing – in a verse's measurements
A sonnet cycle is a cycle of events."
28 july 1989
309
 CONTENS

KALLAGIUM

Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

FLIGHT

Flight (A cycle of sonnets) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

WHITE OBELISK

Beloved, how to soon You left me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Oh, lovely, into my fate you came . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Golden one, youthful one of mine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
In dream I enter the greate hollow temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Sonnet of branching twig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Death`s Rock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
White obelisk (A cycle of sonnets) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Oh, no! my verses will not resurrect You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
To a youthful planet – distant and desired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
The Son of Heaven – Light and the Good he brought . . . . . . . 93
A one-winged bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Pre-existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99

THE GOAL SYNDROME

Into the space of sleep glass footprints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Mene, Tekel, Fares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
When things so badly, when the year is hard . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
Sonnet of one who works only for self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Sonnet about pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
By play of Fate, by will of destinies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111
Parable of one who sows rocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Confession of a transgressor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Who the strings has sundered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Parable of a kite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
The deaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
The hero`s star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Yolk-like the sun trembles in a rut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
The goal syndrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

THE TEACHER

Sonnet about a true teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141

Roerich (a cycle of sonnets) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143
The stalker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Sermon`s end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

FIRESEED

The tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

A sonnet on vanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Fireseed (A cycle of sonnets) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

JOURNEY OCEANWARD

Journey oceanward (A poem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

SPACE BIRDS

Dialog beneath the stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..267

Dialog on the mountainside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
A dialog before flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..297

A WORD ABOUT THE WORD

A sonnet about the word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .307

You say that I`ve dreamed up a world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
311