To Sam Spanier at Matagiri – On His 80th Birthday

The Cradle of the Child

There is communion in the fading day,

The celebration of an ancient's birth,

I watch the bluets rise from mossy beds

Mid pungent odours of renascent earth.

In the chill sunset hours on purple hills

Or slate-black waters of the mountain streams

I am returned to those ancestral roots,

The greening habitat of youthful dreams.

The cherries weep with blossoms lightly blown,

I am the intimate of stately trees

And lightly step into the vast unknown

Dimensions of the new theocracies.

To beauty we am called, the soul's delight,

As a river to the sea is strangely drawn,

The cradle of the Child now gently rocks

Who lights the blazing symbol fires of dawn.