All those who in their earthly dight

Boast learned clans and worldly dower

Come wonder at the poets’ right

And fix your fate as fit your power!

No practiced rationales conceive

When forces on your knowing bend;

Such carnal estimates deceive

When pride attempts the steep ascent.

This way, conceited souls have sought

In compass of archaic strife

But struck upon the verge of thought

To rush, headlong, through blinding light.

So dazzled by the tempting flight

And fronting on the mystic lore

They passed in sudden bounds the night

And heedless through the fabric tore.

Then wept the father for his child

Whose compass must his boldness run

Respecting not what mercies mild

Could shield his course around the sun.

Durand von Meissen

(28)

Alas, is writ the history

Of those whose elemental plans

Had claim upon the Destiny

But seized, too rash, with carnal hands

The motive reigns of deity!

Was it not clear? The bards at first

Set boundaries upon such pride

To staunch against what bastard birth

Could yet unleash on earth and sky?

Mix not in hastiness your words

In offerings of vain conceit;

Let triple bound the fire burn

Or poison from the vessel leaks...

Steady bid the Ark to go

And don’t, impatient, force the day

Or roaring out, a tempest blows

To carry even faith away...

Durand von Meissen

(29)

So quick to estimate the worth

And feigning wise, they stole the day

Then strutting on, betrayed their birth

To be the kings of cursed ways!

But prophets of the coming age

Have tasted tidings of this fate

So sweet at first, the telling page

Though in the end a bitter slake!

More clear, some writing on the wall

Amidst war's company of friends

Who spoiled all else but can't forestall

The dipping scale of amends!

So wrote the cryptic book of life

Before the proud trespassed this way

And greedy, fashioned every strife

To wrack upon the ancient lays!

Or did it seem the sacred stones

That sages kept were for such use

As men could make and then disown

The consequences of abuse?

Durand von Meissen

(30)

Bid them to escape the maze

And weave the hero’s Golden Fleece…

Catch the thread of heroes’ faith

And marry the conflicting states!

Yet clever ploys of sapience

Will not untie the troubled knots

Nor shall their reasoned doctrinaires

Indemnify the pirate lots!

Neither shall allied abuse

Or armies in the streets arrayed

Cower recompense, unloosed

As strings, on bursting winds displayed!

Nor will their factory of lies

Run off the field the sacred part

Of being, which does not rely

On teaching guilds or sophists’ art!

New legislators overpass

Their systems, proving all along

What bards have known is in the grasp

Of wisdom and her healing songs.

Durand von Meissen

(31)

Her anthems would the angels sing

And conscious wonders now unfurl

Enduing on the eagle’s wing

The reformation of the world.

A golden age from wisdom's wild

Which prophets and true sages knew

And poets chant, with metered style

In sacred harmonies of truth.

Though no one, cloaked under the guise

Of learning can recast the lots

As what there is, is for the wise

Whom angels love and men forgot.

To what they will! It never was

And never being comes to pass;

Abandoning the formal cause

Their shadow comes to roost at last.

Knowing not, it’s fit to be

Hid in the bosom of the past

Which ordering, the heart shall see

And so in seeing, live at last.

Durand von Meissen

(32)

Such is the mystery at hand

That twain must lie upon the fates

Of being Man and so withstand

The complex enmities of strife.

Yet everywhere, a further clue

Admits into the larger state:

Where two makes three, that three is true

In one...a simple aggregate.

And what of three resolved as one

Completes the elemental climb?

As two the parents, then the son-

A father for an ageless time.

But father, to what groom is born

An other who has yet to be

Or being not, as men have known

Comes sailing on a boundless sea?

Still, from a depth unknown

This tenant of the nether shore

Who comes unsought, seeking her own

With ciphers of the healing lore.

Durand von Meissen

(33)

Unlike the Siren, who of late

Has tempted some to absent ruth

She mends the heart and satiates

The home-felt yearnings of the truth.

Such understanding and such joy

Of owning what can scarce be spoke

And greater exploits, more employed

In solving what their lovers wrote.

Unraveling the partial ways

That some are wont to boast of worth

She echoes on a timeless sea

The spirit's knowing and rebirth…

A sound of silence in the rush

Of doing, where most spend their life

Speaks love as out the burning bush

And peace upon the winds of strife.

Alas, all may take to heart

The fiery reigns of aerial course

And yet unlock the secret haunts