To Mary Helen

2/6/02

Soul in Transition

Riveted to the ticking of the clock

Relentless the attack of piercing pain,

The numbing cancer drugs reduce the shock

But ebb and flow of agony remain.

Minutes pass, millennia of Will,

As all life's flame-events go flashing by,

The shattered tortured shell tenacious still,

Its mantra to the Lord a poignant cry

For bliss in an uncomprehending world

That moves a puppet or automaton

Whose dark desires on the Spirit hurled

For sated joys of dull oblivion.

The days drift by a disconnected strand

And hours move more slowly than the years,

The sweeping motion of the second-hand

Agony's arc grinding the body's gears.

As an erratic pendulum is swayed

By hands unseen toying with our lives

All seems a Wheel and all our progress stayed,

A dream in which the Self alone survives.

Yet through the deadening haze the brightened Soul

Ever of immortality aware

Moving towards the psychic being's goal

Begins again a vessel to prepare

That God be born in Man and earth renewed

To beauty and the consciousness divine,

In Force-filled forms with truth-light's joy imbued,

Sculpted to the Artist's vast design.