He could have found his way there with shut eyes,
Under the hawthorn's overhanging gloom,
He heard the fat bees fumbling through the bloom,
The starling's long, low whistle of surprise --
"Has he come home?"
So well he knew the pattern of a place
He never had set eyes on till this hour,
While the unseen beckoned, the unknown set the pace.
Blindly he went, as saints to heaven's grace
Or night-moths to a flower.
A light enveloped all things, not of day,
However it poured through polished leaves in sunny
Shafts of strange color of greeny-gold bush-honey
But shed from -- what? How many lives away?
No clue now, to any!
Then something reached out arms and gathered him in.
Preoccupied bees still crept through the pale curds
Of bloom, the sweet conversation of the birds
Continued, as he felt that spell begin
To work, not needing words.
What power had circumvented time and space,
Refuting the melancholy "Nevermore"? ...
And then he met the strangers at their door.
All things lapsed back into the commonplace,
Exactly as before.
Forgotten was the moment. People talked
According to pattern, gone the far-off tone
Of trumpets from some kingdom overthrown --
Some furnace of joy through which he must have walked,
And not alone.
First published in The Bulletin, 16 January 1952;
and later in
Australian Poetry 1953 edited by Nan McDonald, 1953; and
From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, 1964.
