DEEP IN THE STILLNESS

Deep in the Stillness

He threw me away

like a clod of earth.

He didn't know

I was a thing with a soul.

He didn't know

I was alive.

He kept on throwing me

like a clod of earth

out of his way -

onto that neglected path

that happened to be mine.

And so I kept travelling

along my own way.

Each time some fragment broke off -

some infatuation, some addiction to happiness,

some earthly hope,

some dream squandered on man.

Each time some fragment of my being

would break off.

And now it was my turn.

The world was already left behind -

like a desert in a sandstorm,

like an ocean in a hurricane,

like a desolate city.

Man, step by step descending,

was already left behind.

And now it was my turn.

Standing on the last patch of earth

I gathered myself into a whole thing

and hurled myself into the stillness.

This was my silence -

pervasive and expansive.

Now the world was either a dream

or a sea-flower

imagined at the end of the ocean.

Deep in the stillness.

Only the sound of my footsteps.