| A sacrifice of mixing blood, Transforms a violent world Into a tree engulfed with flame, Into blank darkness hurled. |
| 1. Where no one keeps the time that time itself erases, Time falls asleep, ceases its frantic chases From one tormented moment to another; The names and actions that once were the basis For sorting out the fuss, sifting the bother, Are claimed by mute oblivion, and rather Than raging in a battle to persist, That burden is laid down, carried no further; At last it is sufficient to exist. 2. When Archimago sees the queen approach the rail And it appears his tactics will prevail, His heart is charged with disbelieving joy; For he was sure his violent schemes would fail, And he had set his purpose to destroy The city, leaving no one to annoy Him with remembrance of his foolish plot; But now her actions seem designed to buoy His hopes — until it’s clear that they are not. 3. As she propels herself so high into the air, His surging hope collapses to despair; The seconds left him as he sees her fall Parade within his mind both foul and fair Reflections — lovely she is, after all, Stupidly stubborn, too, to have the gall To fling her life away hoping to save Her city and its destiny forestall — And yet so lovely, still, and yet so brave. 4. So run his thoughts up to the final impact point; She shatters shattering him; Their wounds anoint The ground where flaming roses scattered from The balcony lie all around; The joint Demise of queen and wizard make the sum Of guilt and innocence — so what must come Of their co-mingled blood? The final shock, Consuming everything, the maximum Disruption, killing calendar and clock. 5. Erupting in the shape of one great, flaming tree, All things, all things in their entirety Are swept up in its branches, plunged down to Its roots, transformed like Daphne, utterly Recast in flaming wood; And what was true About the roses, burning, ever new, Likewise describes the tree, which twists and turns In empty space; Were there someone to view, They’d see it, too, persists although it burns. * * * 6. Where there is nothing, there you will find everything; Here’s nothing but a tree; We watch it swing Into the void; The personalities We hung our story on have taken wing Within its substance, and familiar keys To their behavior, what we’d seize To understand them — form, and face, and word — Are gone without a trace; Their sympathies And appetites dissolved, voices unheard. 7. The flaming tree is all the living substance left In all the universe; Hardly bereft Of personality, its branches yearn For absent sun, its sad roots feel the theft Of fertile soil to feed them; It may burn But does not waste, each twist and turn In emptiness and longing, represents Unkillable desire, the drive, the churn Of all that suffer their impermanence. 8. This is the only place and now the only time; Here Time and Change enforce their subtle rhyme: The yearning graduates to weariness; The limbs and roots desist to climb And reach; Frustrated still, a different stress Now courses through these limbs; The outward press Of strong desire, roilings and twistings cease, And every fibre, every flame no less, Of this great burning tree now long for peace. 9. No need to reach for peace, no need to grope or strain To find it: Never something we must gain — Instead, we must allow it to emerge; And as for longing, no need to refrain From feelings, no necessity to purge Discomfort, nor to kill each aching urge; These very impulses move our desire, And like the cadence of a tidal surge, Propel us from their darkness to this fire. 10. This is strange fire that warms the wood but does not waste; The tree is not afflicted, rather graced With flame, and in the blaze it finds release; Transformed within, its changes can be traced Outwardly (as its torments now decrease Moment to moment, and then finally cease) From flaming tree to swirls of flaming dust, Alight with possibilities, with peace, Our common self, our origin, our trust. 11. The tree is tree no more — instead a stardust cloud; Drifting and shifting, silent, still endowed With consciousness, however slumbering; Flames concentrate to points of light; A crowd Of stardust swirls around each one, a ring Of stuff, and here and there a thickening Takes place, a coalescence, spun and twirled In orbit round a light, whose brightening New star lights up what we would call a world. 12. There are no numbers to enumerate, we cannot doubt. The many times a change like this played out; How many a world and many a sun The constant, steady change has brought about; Among the worlds so generated, one I spy, a world whose miracles are done In tiny grandeur, mute magnificence, In greens and browns under a golden sun; Our story will resume there, in a sense. 13. In greens and browns and blue, under a golden sun, Tiny and grand, its miracles are done; First here, then there, we watch as life awakes (So old, so new, the rich phenomenon;) And here begins again the same heart aches And happiness, the toll that labor takes, The rain, the snow, the winter and the warm, The planting, harvest, stillness and the quakes, The morning, evening, night, the calm, the storm. 14. And there I’ll guide this lifelong song of mine Into a final canto for your eyes — Whoever you may be — and it is fine If you’re not there, and this, my echo, dies With me; To make this has been my best prize, A privilege, the source of lifelong learning; Schooled by this tale, as foolish as it’s wise, This tale, blooming as much as it is burning, I met my soul, and heard the music of my yearning. finis canto xi |
| Glorianna Table of Contents |
| The Cantos |
| Appendices |