Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.
Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.
A house in Konya, ancient Iconium, where St. Paul preached the Gospel. Around and around. Ethereal music and chanting. Another world. Around and around, a pole in a house, Rumi in another world, longing for the Beloved, the scent of her tresses. And then he stopped and asked a question.
We walked through fields of flowers to a riverbank. A reed pulled from its source.
Attar and a flock of birds lift the Persona from that Valley of Search.
Filed under Epic
Swirling Tunnel of Time
Tolstoy. Yasnaya Polyana.
Wainamoinen, along with Sigurd, Beowulf, and the Valkyries, lift the Persona from the Isle of green to a grove of green, turning toward early fall, as through a swirling tunnel of time, to a birch bench. Tolstoy guides me further along the path, discusses his religious beliefs, mourns his mistakes, grieves Russia’s collapse into the crevasse of modernity. Two young poets swept away into the gulag emerge to carry the Persona from Russia, with Hadji Murad, heading south.
Filed under Epic
Englands Green & Pleasant Land
London. Englands Green.
Browning’s poem Christmas Eve especially opened the door for me, finally walked through, after decades of thinking about it. Browning and Tennyson before Westminster Abbey. A cordial reception and then a dressing down. The Federation of the World.
Blake and Milton walk together over from St. Margaret’s Church and join us. My master guides me to what Blake called, so rightly, “Englands green & pleasant land.” A simple parish church. Surrounding graves. A church perhaps Thomas Hardy had restored, in need again of his services. A prayer.
And the Lady of the Lake. A thrush, not darkling now, though it were. Excalibur. Arthur returns. An inscription on the shining blade.
Filed under Epic
Having thought of Chartres Cathedral and Dante for more decades than I can remember, I consider it a blessing that he chose to guide me there. The Queen of Heaven, to whom I prayed as a child, found me, I hope, not entirely unworthy of her grace and mercy, though we human beings, from that perspective, are always undeserving. Europe, a hallowed tale, in colored glass.
One always wonders how to go on. How from here. But one does somehow. Through the labyrinth. On one’s knees.
Back in London, so soon. Outside Westminster Abbey.
Filed under Epic
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