Silently, For Amal on my birthday

Secret Splendour

7/29/01

I have lived in cloistered sovereignty

King of all the nonessential things,

A dreamer awash in unreality

Where thoughts unbidden on invisible wings

Fly into mind's corridors unmanned.

What is this narrow entity, this "I",

That struggles to regain its high command,

A vestige now of former lives that vie

Reluctant to bear the burning flame within.

Slowly the outer walls erode and fall,

And Ego's crust continues to wear thin,

A face I glimpse, from ages past recall:

Through veils of mind His secret splendour steals

And from my soul removes the blinding seals.

I have lived in cloistered sovereignty

King of all the nonessential things,

A dreamer awash in unreality

Where thoughts unbidden on invisible wings

Fly into mind's corridors unmanned.

What is this narrow entity, this "I",

That struggles to regain its high command,

A vestige now of former lives that vie

Reluctant to bear the burning flame within.

Slowly the outer walls erode and fall,

And Ego's crust continues to wear thin,

A face I glimpse, from ages past recall:

Through veils of mind His secret splendour steals

And from my soul removes the blinding seals.