Go back with me
into that unborn time
of listening
to beating from within,
and muffled sound beyond the wall,
and choice cannot contaminate the mind,
itself a pinnacle of knowing
then with pure impression as its food.

A blessed state!
and sought by teachers of the soul
contemplative...
passed on as vision,
pure enlightenment, and grace.
But now acceptance of surprise
becomes the clarion to action
though the self preserve the choice,
and if denial wins the day
another trembling artery is lost
forever...cut off and shriveled
from the fountainhead within.

Thus it is the servant begs of passersby.
Already destitute from
cornucopic flow, he reaps the famine
of self-emptied self,
drained not from sacrifice,
but from the blinding flash
of meretricious glory, hot and dry,
and swallowed in the black.

It is a bicephalic monster we engage,
Bemusing us with schizophrenic battles
of the servant and the self.
Creation of demand, supply the axiom,
and sanctified with new explosions
from the womb.
And only chaos casts the shadow of our beauty,
and in penumbra, irony.

Now then, so late...so clear...
There is no servant but the self,
and but for inspiration,
no outside,
and but for self, no grace at all.
There is no distance to your God
The stretch is inward
and the destination is a miracle
encircling all.

©1997 Robert Ludden

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