A Children's Story of the Golden Age – told in couplets

For Khusali

Paradise on Earth

June 18, 2004

"She comes, my child, graceful as the trees

That bend in homage with the morning breeze.

Her hair seems woven of sunlight's golden strands

And in the fragrant petals of her hands . . ."

"My father, this bird of paradise came down

Onto my hand, his song to me unknown

Though I have studied carefully the call

Melodious of meadowlark and all

The sweet replies of singers on the bough.

O father shall you take him to your brow

And from the eye that sees discern his heart

Or why he came reluctant to depart

My side or leave the company of men

Returning to Elysium again?

So Daran looked within the feathered one

And saw an emissary from the sun.

Such beauty crowned his face that seemed to bear

The impress of a spiritual air,

His lips all Heaven's secrets could disclose

His cheeks that shamed the beauty of the rose,

A forehead crowned with knowledge of the spheres,

A body ageless passing through the years,

A star illumining the fields of night

And burning orbs that held God's golden light.

And Daran spoke, each word was fraught with weight.

"Within your hand there rests a soul so great

Passing through the borderlands of space,

Harbinger of a diviner race.

His song to thee a joyous message brings

Of life transformed and love refound he sings,

And of the earth's divine deliverance.

But he is trapped by occult spell or trance.

His song a message lost when life began

Its slow uprise from animal to man.

Take him daughter and with my sons provide

A resting-place in safety to abide

Until the dawn returns from lap of night

And he ascends beyond our earthly sight.

So Faith embraced the paradisal bird

Carrier of the eternal Word

And placed him mid the forest's scented leaves

On a branch of happiness where no soul grieves

But kept his message sealed within her heart

Knowing now that God would not depart

From earth, the chosen home of the Divine

Of whom our hearts and bodies are the sign.

The sons now followed their predestined way

Advancing side by side in sibling play

Till there approached an aged and wizened man.

"Explain to me this riddle if you can,"

He said, as he unsheathed his fine-honed sword,

"Who owns this land and where resides its Lord?

Take care in your response for you must find

The truth beyond the purview of the mind."

Both the sons fell silent and withdrew

To inner depths to seek the truth that few

Can know who have not silence found,

Then spoke as one, no longer by thought bound,

Receivers of a light from Wisdom's eye

Whose brilliance mind once glimpsed could not deny,

"Our father the king owns all the world you see

Yet he but serves the one divinity

Who holds us rapt within his sweet embrace.

You are his representative of grace."

Whereon the thaumaturge cast off his veil

To a great height he rose, no longer frail

But garbed in silken lineaments of gold

Creation's mystic story now he told

Of God and the angelic hierarchy

Who peered across the Perfects' boundary,

Saw consciousness awake in earthly soil

That welcomed the adventuring spirit's toil

To fashion from the clay a being fair,

An immortal Self of consciousness prepare,

The instrument of an eternal will

That shall the earth and all the heavens fill.

Now in the forest's heart a silence vast,

An ancient longing from an unknown past

Was felt as Faith spoke to her winged friend,

"I know that your arrival marks the end

Of darkness that has long enveloped man,

A falsehood planted first when life began

Its climb from matter's base of mud and stone

To this carrier of soul in flesh and bone

That shall look out one day with seeing eyes,

Earth as a living being recognize

No longer to abuse, her gifts despoil

By human greed and hard uncaring toil,

Re-wed the waylost spirit with its source,

Awaken to an all-transforming force

That dwells within each mortal soul unseen,

Unfelt, unheard from whom we sometimes glean

The shards of truth with which we live our days

And learn to seek, to worship and to praise."

A vision revealed to Faith the iron bars

That held this golden captive from the stars.

She willed that he be freed to walk the earth

Singing of a superhuman birth

And wonders unrevealed to surely come

When we have made this world the spirit's home

Our vision lost to self, attuned above

And all our smallness widened out to love.