Photograph from David Whittaker's
"Stafford
Beer: a personal memoir"
Last updated 31st. July 2004
SPIN
(i.m. Stafford Beer)
And here, below the twilight arch
quiet now lies the quarry
Abandoned shadows spinning,
silently echo cryptic intimations,
reverberating wall to wall
in this hushed hidden cell.
August wind freshly stirs
the sweet incense, charred and
dying daily, daily dying,
embers of an ashen altar sighing.
Still spinning....spinning still
The hourglass suspends its
turning game, rotating space into
time-tied threads; meeting a deadline
just this side of forever and ever...again.
Still spinning......spinning still
That untamed garden of the brain
tended by a tender heart of plenitude;
where dappled shades interplay
and butterflies gorgeously display.
(A circumspect owl gives a startled hoot
from the void; to-wit-to-woo to you too, old pal!)
The still point of the spinning wheel
embalms and calms emblems of the
desire to be without desire, to begin
journey's final game...again.
And the transit of absence marks
a tutelary presence here, below the twilight arch
Spinning still.... spinning still...........spinning still... ... ...
©David Whittaker 2004