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The Abundance of Brightness

by Dorothy Walters
(1928 - ) Timeline

Original Language
English

Secular or Eclectic
Contemporary

     God is not unknown on account of obscurity
     but on account of the abundance of brightness.
          -- St. Thomas Aquinas


1.
Dante Mounting to the Rose of Heaven

Not one of us
could breathe this air,
face this naked radiance
unscathed.
Here music turns to light,
a tone so sweet
that we, dulled by
our familiar calliope,
mistake its sound for silence.

Dante, mounting to tiers of
trembling flame,
found light. Light everywhere.
Circles, wheels,
light on light,
a dance of invisibles.
The flames pulsating, as if
measuring the breath of heaven.
At the last, he falls forward,
caught in widening rings
of implacable bright.

2.
At Eleusis

Even at Eleusis,
after the long journey,
the sea-bath among the sacred waves,
the accounts of the grieving mother
and her vanished child,
at the end
the shouts rang out
like birth-cries in the throats
of the startled pilgrims, blinded
by the flare of torches sweeping
from frames of darkness.
Then silence. Then they saw.

3.
A Celebration

And then quiet.
Someone who whispers:
now we are free.

Which was, almost,
true,
but only in the way
a bird,
leaving a limb,
goes freely into
a different realm,
an atmosphere
more pure,
more transparent,
but that, too,
maintaining its fixities.

4.
[for those who] have beheld the Tao... gems sparkle on dusty roads; puddles appear as pools of lapis lazuli; tough weeds acquire fragile beauty...
     -- John Blofield


The I Ching calls it clinging, fire:
"Fire has no definite form,"
it says,
"but clings to the burning object
and thus is bright."

 

 

-- from Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters

Amazon.com

 

Themes

  Birds
  Birth, Rebirth
  Fire
  Freedom
  Honey


Recommended Books


A Cloth of Fine Gold: Poems of the Inner Journey, by Dorothy Walters
Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening, by Dorothy Walters / Lawrence Edwards, others
Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters
Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation, by Dorothy Walters

 

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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.