Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Bohemian Ode to Perennial Damascus

 May be an image of tree and outdoors

At times, if not quite often,

what is old, nay, ancient,

is growing, moving slow.

So deep down—and high

its quiet well and roots do go.

 

So do ancient, timeless loves

and much knowing songs

and so does Damascus of Syria,

the oldest town on earth perhaps.

And if Hades has its Lethe,

 

Cocytus, Acheron, and Styx,

the River of Uninterrupted,

Undying Remembering,

would then have to flow

across the greatest Aeons

 

in this Well-Watered Land

of Damascus, the Mother

of All Cities of This World.

There in the sea of sands

and the scorching light,

 

homes tap souls’ refreshed,

bracing and cooling springs,

ever constant, ever nearby,

just as they do with wisdom

folded in the fan of silent shade.

 

And just as human dwellings show

what people think of Gods and souls

and beauty, either within or around,

then these Damascene houses note

that they are flowers made of stone

 

and temples where noise must cease

and yield a solemn hush with which

one can take and lift and live and taste

a thought turning into its avian verse

to grace and luminate one’s awed face.

 

There in the heart of such temple-homes

are atria bequeathed by the Romans,

the Persians, or the Phoenicians too—

to tell that the soul at its most divine

is always and always has been—inside

 

a site of profound peace and serene ease,

geometry and a garden of life that’s true

and intimate as only some legendary love

can be when two become for one another

already on earth a pair of justified well wings.

 

As in such a love so in such an ancient place,

the stem and spindle of the world itself give

them their spine, constancy, and consonance

and their sense and charm and continuation—

as there is the point where the eternal itself abides.

 

Thus Damascus’ tale is always timeless as it is

old and as old and timeless as it’s always fresh—

one of the oldest songs of the soul for us on earth,

teaching like its sacred atria that one is worth

what one has inside as much as to what she’s open to.

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