Dorothea Spears 

         Magic Material

Since man attained the use of the magical ground

From which he came, of which he is a part,

To fashion (so he fancies) to his heart

He thinks to reach to Godhood at a bound;

Perfect the pattern which is lost and found

But in the archetype, by his own art:

Discard the archetype and in his mart

Refute the magic and dispute his bound.

He takes the magic substance in his hand,

The matter, energy, spirit, what-you-will,

And thinks to mold it with his mortal skill

To be subservient to his demand.

Yet the tiniest cell still radiates a thrill

Of magic man cannot understand.

Dorothea Spears

         Maiden-Hair

A browning bit

Of filmy fern –

We gathered it

 Beside the burn

 One April day;

And kissed: there fell

A gossamer spell

As fragile, fair

 As this frail spray

 Of Maiden -hair.

A memory kiss –

 A fluff of down!

That’s all. And this

 Leaf turning brown.

          Mamre

Here is no garish newness.

Moulded by Time’s hand

and mellowed by the friendly years

the dreaming houses stand

sunning themselves in rows;

and on the bearded thatch

an emerald harvest grows.

In comfortable gossip

the low roofs cluster close,

while jealous hills reach forth

bare, stalwart arms to guard their long repose.

And in the Spring

potent, unseen fingers fling

their cloth of gold

across the hills, untarnished, bright

with gems of orange and of blue and white-

a carpet for a king

beneath brown feet unrolled!

It glitters in the envious light

of noon, unbuyable, unbought, unsold –

yet given free

to all with eyes to see.

           Man

Am I not wonderful? I stand in awe

When I survey this universe of me

Responding to the universal law

And held in orbit by Divine decree.

All evolution’s history I span,

All elements. For those with eyes to see −

Creation's story since the world began I

Is written in this book indelibly.

These atom solar systems fraught with power,

United here in this mortality,

At some predestined and immortal hour

Will meet the magic that shall set the free

And man will burst at last the imprisoning clod

And take his rightful place beside his God.

              Man the rider

Pedestrian man walked in a garden once

And was satisfied.

Then

He tamed himself a horse and learned to ride.

Since when

He has never been content again

Unless he was taming something,

Harnessing some life or dumb thing,

Wheel or wing.

He mastered the wild white horses of the sea

And rode on the back of the wind,

And if he took a toss

And rode headlong into eternity

- No matter - the man behind

Learned from his loss,

He harnessed wood and iron and steel

And bridled the fuel from earth's depths

To speed his chariot wheel.

Today he spans the earth on wings or sound.

Tomorrow he will race

On telepathic steeds around

The little world's diminished ground;

And perhaps the day after

He will shatter his cramping carapace

In a final burst of triumphant laughter

And ride across the bounds of time and space.

Dorothea Spears

       Man, Full Of Sound And Fury –

When I observe the moon with her pale gaze

And regal gait unhurried mount the sky,

I am rebuked for Man’s incessant why.

From her fixed orbit she far influences rays

Nor seeks to alter macrocosmic ways,

Unquestioning, assured. While you and I

With microcosmic egotism try

To scale Eternity by temporal days.

We think by thinking to alleviate

Immortal pain; by striving understand

All mystery and force Creation’s hand;

Ignore the proffered key and storm the gate.

Poor fools … Before the burning bush, unshod,

Be still. Be still … and know that I AM God.

“Man's Reach Should Exceed His Grasp”

It doesn't really matter at all, how deep

The intervening valleys, or how high

And inaccessible the peak, or steep

And bleak the crumbling crag we clamber by.

It doesn't matter that we must retrace

Our footsteps, having taken a wrong turning.

To slip, to fall at times, is no disgrace

If every error can become a learning.

It doesn't matter, if we never lose

The vision, in the valley, of the peak

We seek to conquer, nor discard the shoes

We use for climbing though the flesh be weak

Only this can make life's venture vain -

To have no beckoning summit to attain.

Dorothea Spears

      13.6.1963

         Manchester and Durban

Here I am in Manchester. And there you are in Durban,

Sick of the sight of sugar cane, and mosque, and fez and turban;

Of golden sunlight sifting through the laced flamboyant trees –

And I would give ten years of life for just a glimpse of these.

Here am I in Manchester, with skies forever mourning

In dull grey weeds of clinging mist, a cloak of fog adorning

The smoky roofs that huddle close in dread of solitude:

And there you are in Durban, cursing Africa as crude!

Here am I, and there you are. And could we change our places

I dare say I should cry for fog, and you for turbaned faces.

“Oaklands”, Newlands Ave, Newlands, C.P.

               March of Freedom

Can you not hear them, hear the measured beat

Of countless footsteps beating out the song

Of freedom, keeping step with us along

The centuries, the world, the city street?

The ways are packed, are packed with marching feet

For we are part of an invincible throng

Marching across the years, relentless, strong,

Unyielding, and impatient of retreat.

Can you not see the glow where we have trod?

Can you not see the glory through the night?

‘Tis not alone our torches gleaming white:

Across the centuries our comrades plod,

The ageless ones, co-bearers of the Light,

Who lit their torches at the Torch of God.

           Marian Anderson Sang

“He’s got the whole world in His Hands” she sang-

He’s got the whole world in His Hand.

Across the ether of the world the rich voice rang

and every child in the world who heard

the simple word could understand.

And even we, the doubters who have grown too old

for truth unproven, suddenly felt less cold.

As if this warmth could soften all the lands

That hate and fear have frozen, and release the gold

At the rainbow’s end in the hearts of men again.

For even in our arrogance I think we’ve known

The mind will never find the answer, nor reason bind

The world… or make men kind.

But here transcending and immanence

contract and expand

to such a size as any heart can hold.

He’s got the whole world in His Hand.

(From Kodiak, Alaska)

Cape Times Sept 9^th 1963

             May day

Time You shall not cheat me of this hour

Of laziness this languid Autumn day,

Nor make me measure minutes while I stay

To pray beneath the plane tree ere its dower

Of leaves be spent, and each chrysanthemum flower

Has shaken its shaggy head and been sent away.

So suddenly, silently, April turns to May.

But you’ll not find me; here in my ivory tower

I’ll close my ears and hear no urgent call

At all except the muttering of the birds

And lingering Summer's notes of brown and gold.

I’ll hide behind my blue and scarlet wall

Of hedge at garden's edge and woo the words

That watch in the garden while Summer and I grow old.

Dorothea Spears

          May Twenty-Fourth

Let us be quiet for a little time,

Remembering…For there was born this day

In a lowly state a man who was to climb

The Mount of Vision, showing us the Way.

He disciplined the flesh, and conquered pride.

He learned to walk with mind and intuition,

Knowing emotion as a traitor guide

For one who would fulfil a cosmic mission.

He served mankind, and loved his native land,

But loving, realised her greater fate:

Against all smaller ends he took his stand

To build a nation fit for World Estate.

In silence let us seek that greater vision;

Repledge ourselves today with stern decision.

24^th May 1870 Jan Christiaan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa and proponent of Commonwealth & League of Nations, born in Bovenplaats, Cape Colony (d. 1950)

“Veritas” Constantia C.P.

         MEADOW BRIDE

Happy meadows, gold and green.

Sleeping, sun-kissed and serene.

Radiant in summer sheen :

Laughing meadows, green and gold.
Wooed by winds from o’er the wold.
Meadows shy and breezes bold:

Still the laughing lambent stream
Smiles to see the golden gleam,

Smiles, and dreams his silver dream.

The Meadow is the River’s bride—
Winds may wander far and wide
But she will never leave his side.

He loves to see her don her gown
Of green, and wear her golden crown.
And diamonds the dew drops down.

That is why, when Maybells ring
You’ll hear the brooklet laugh and sing:
He’s always happiest in Spring

MEADOW BRIDE.

Happy meadows, gold and green.
Sleeping, sun-kissed and serene.

Radiant in summer sheen :

Laughing meadows, green and gold.
Wooed by winds from o’er the wold.
Meadows shy and breezes bold:

Still the laughing lambent stream
Smiles to see the golden gleam,

Smiles, and dreams his silver dream.

The Meadow is the River’s bride—
Winds may wander far and wide
But she will never leave his side.

He loves to see her don her gown
Of green, and wear her golden crown.
And diamonds the dew drops down.

That is why, when Maybells ring
You’ll hear the brooklet laugh and sing:
He’s always happiest in Spring!

           Meeting and Parting

The time grows short. The minutes of our days

Print their imperious patterns on the page

Of time, where time betrays

Our limited illimitable heritage.

The stencils of our thoughts meet, merge and part;

The figures touch. and overlap and sever;:

Recorded by the fingers of the brain

And undecipherable by the heart

The ineradicable hieroglyphs remain

Forever.

And time, unprejudiced by poetry or art

Or science through the ages will retain

The patterns that the minutes of our days have caught

Indelibly, created by our thought.

Dorothea Spears

                Melisande

Do you remember, Melisande, the ways

We trod last summer, where the river plights

With the green woods, each hour a parphrase

Of love, revealing new and finer heights?

Do you remember how we played, as a child plays

With priceless jewels, careless of delights –

With molten sunlight melded into days

That gleamed like gems against the velvet nights?

Do you remember, Melisande? …The guns

Are shattering with hate the blazing skies

And hot beneath this mother of all suns

Death, gleaming like a silver arrow, flies.

We run to cover: death is in each hand…

…Do you remember Knysna, Melisande?

                Memory's a mender

Someday these shattered fragments of beauty strewn

Like bits of broken glass about the ways

We wander through between the womb and tomb

That catch, sometimes, the iridescent rays

Of light which can transmute a drop of dew

Into a diamond or turn a tear

Into a rainbow, a promise of hope in lieu

Of comfort to counteract a loss or a fear,

Shall all be gathered, together in a heap

Of iridescent memories in a bowl

Of beauty and given back to us to keep

Fitted together into a perfect whole.

Don’t despise them, friend, don't throw them away,

The broken bits of beauty of every day.

Dorothea Spears

         Memory’s Room

Strange is the room Memory:

Full of secret drawers where lie

The hidden hours. And pass by

Day in, day out…and suddenly

A perfume or bar of song,

Or some chance word, may prove the key-

And lock contrived so cunningly

Spring back, revealing to your sight

Those unexpected keepsakes long

Forgotten. Somethings they are white

With dust. And somethings they are bright,

Untarnished, and you catch your breath

At their strange newness, as if Death

Had left untouched a corpse. The years

Embalm at random joy and tears,

And none can tell what he will see

Within this room of Memory,

Or what strange souvenirs he’ll find

Beyond the closed door of mind.

            Memory’s A Mender

Someday these shattered fragments of beauty strewn

Like bits of broken glass about the ways

We wander through between the womb and tomb,

That catch, sometimes, the iridescent rays

Of light which can transmute a drop of dew

Into a diamond or turn a tear

Into a rainbow, a promise of hope in lieu

Of comfort to counteract a loss or fear,

Shall all be gathered together in a heap

Of iridescent memories in a bowl

Of beauty, and given back to us to keep,

Fitted together into a perfect whole.

Don’t despise them, friend, don’t throw them away,

The broken bits of beauty of every day.

Dorothea Spears

9.5.67

                   Message

Who shall say what is good for my people? Who?

Where is such a bold presumptuous man

As thinks that he and he alone can span

The Mind of God and wield it – is it you?

Two thousand years ago My Word broke through

The hard hypocrisies that sought to ban

Inconsequential nothing, and to plan

The elevation of a chosen few.

I gave the key to you of Love, not hate;

Proclaimed the Sabbath made for man and not

The man for Sabbath; humbled self to others.

I gave you Oneness…and you separate

My world into little parts. Have you forgot

That in your Father’s sight all men are brothers?

“Veritas”

Constantia, C.P.

            Mid-Year Morning

The misty mid-year morning

Was still soft-eyed with sleep

When I arose to keep

My tryst with that dictator, Time;

The clinging clouds suborning

The sun to a semblance of abdication

Of its place sublime;

And all the valley deep,

Knee-deep in dew,

With fledgling day

Uncertain if to smile or weep.

And in the silence of the dawn

A bird soared eagerly from its nest

Within my breast

And went singing through the clouds and the dew

Straight to the heart of the hidden sun –

It knew …it knew!

            Mined Coal

An oafish lump, unshapen, black and blind;

Torn unyielding from the tortured womb

Of Mother Earth, from whose deep wounds men find

Perchance a living, and perchance a tomb.

Here’s coldness, with potential heat congealed.

Here’s helplessness, potential power rife.

Here’s ugliness, potential beauty sealed,

And death all pregnant with potential life.

A spark – potentialities become

Reality! But lacking this plan

Goes unfulfilled, the power and beauty dumb,

The coal but clod. It is the same with Man.

                Mirrors

I will tell you what man is…

Man is a mirror reflecting good or ill;

Fogged, all too often; blemished;

Distorted, if you will,

Reflecting life in grotesque forms –

But mirror still,

Reflecting sun or sod;

Showing the avenue to Hell

Or the path to God.

I will tell you what God is… white

God is a clear flame of living light

Shining across Time

And Space, infinite.

And where the mirror is turned to Him

Is no night.

I will tell you what love is…

Love is that flame reflecting on the mirror.

The flame is constant

But one glass is clearer.

One glass may lie a lifetime

Unseen, reflecting mire:

And one may focus the light, a burning-glass,

And set the world on fire.

              Moloch

The Moloch we have made becomes our.. master.

Now we are afraid. Ourselves have freed

insensate and insatiable need

For human sacrifice, for dire disaster

He is hungry . . . Feed him . . . faster . . . faster!

Have we not conditioned him to speed

And powered him with human hate and greed

More virulent, more concentrated, vaster?

We made him big; shall; we begrudge his fill?

Moloch always craves for sacrifice,

Always has, and doubtless always will,

Who are we to quibble at his price,

Who made him as he is, to maim and kill,

Or quibble at the falling of the dice?

Dorothea Spears

           Moment of Knowing

Hold this moment, hold it

Do not let it go

For in this moment lives

All time

And all eternity

When Being is to know.

Hold this figure poised

Against this mountain’s side…

Distant mountains, distant sea below,

Above the resinous pines and the place

Where the tips of the trees and the rocky peak

Become the overarching blue of the sky

Merging into infinity;

Hold this figure poised against the mountain’s side,

This infinitesimal vastness

That is I.

And God created man in his own image

Matter, mind and spirit made He him –

And this minute figure

Here, now

Holds in its embrace all time

All life all space.

Hold this moment…do not let it go.

Hold this figure poised in eternity

Where being is to know.

Confine this moment in this symbol

For consciousness to keep.

Now is forever

But the little mind forgets

And the moment of knowing is left behind.

            Moment of magic

I thought it was the long rays of the sun

Making a magic of the winter day

On the edge of Spring.

No wind was in the skies

But a gust of wonder dust

Blew a blast of beauty in my eyes,

Driving up Herschel Walk before the oaks

Below the road were consciously awake

But on the verge of waking

And thinking of forsaking their black cloaks.

It wasn't only the slanting sun making

The magic that my heart caught -

It was the rising urge of the sap

Little more than a thought

Of Spring, an intimation of green

In the aura of the trees.

A brief prevision of the thing

That flashes over the forest

At winter's end, when tall trees dream of Spring.

You must be quick to catch this light

This magical moment on the wing

Between a night and a night!

Dorothea Spears

                 MONTANUS

There are craggy heights serene and bare
By ordinary mortals never trod
Whereon the naked soul may talk with God
And taste the heady vintage of an air
Too potent for a child of earth, too rare.
Whereon no grass is friendly, no trees nod.
Nor moss, nor edelweiss, nor goldenrod,
Above all hope and courage and despair.

Frail man requires a stalwart soul to bear
The impact of eternity, the vast
Perspective of the future and the past.

If he the ultimate ascent would dare :

For wine of earth is impotent at last
To quench the deathless thirst begotten there.

                Moon magic

Is the moon, then, nothing but the moon -

A dead reflector hung in distant space

Circling aimlessly ambitious earth

Pre-ordained in orbit and in space?

And all its phases nothing but the way

The mirror may reflect the great sun's ray

Upon our little planet, late or soon?

Is there no magic in the way the moon

Waxes and wanes: no potency, no power

Available to man; no subtler tide

Than ocean's when the moon attains her hour?

Explore. Explain. Deflate her as you will -

I believe the moon has magic still.

Dorothea Spears

          Mother Tongue

Trees I have always understood.

They speak a language that I know:

I have an affinity with Wood,

I think, from very long ago.

And mountains I have loved; and streams

That chatter through a woodland dell

Have always murmured in my dreams-

But what they say I cannot tell.

They speak a tongue, though heard, unknown

And foreign as the words of Sea.

But forest language is my own…

Yes, I can understand a tree.

              Mother’s Day

Why

This day

More than any other

Should I buy

Anemones,

Palatinate in memory?

Always

I remember

Touching your hands,

Tracing your life-span

For the first time

That evening.

Always

I remember

The horror of your dying,

And that I had not kissed you

When I left

That morning.

Returning –

Beetroot and blood

Mingling on the cellar stairs,

A half-made meal

Your cold memorial.

So why

Flowers today

More than any other?

 (Palatinate – of the County Palatine and, in County Durham only, the purple of the University colours.)

            Mountain walk

Every bark-encrusted bole of every sky-aspiring tree,

Everything I see - belongs to me.

Each cloud and crag, pastelled gum and poplar, oak, and resinous pine,

And waterfall, and starry weed, is mine,

Is mine forever: I have conquered them with nose and ear and eye.

Memory, keep them for me till I die.

Dorothea Spears

                  Movements

There are movements of Kultur and Movements of Race;

And political movements all over the place –

With Nazis and Fascists and Purified Nats

And Bolshies: and Movements for not wearing hats;

There are all kinds of Movements (not mentioning shirts)

For shortening hours or lengthening skirts,

For abolishing that, and encouraging this,

For being hygienic and banning the kiss:

There are movements for fostering life in the Nude

And Movements for urging us back to the prude:

There are movements for starving or feeding the brute,

For slimming, for “fitting”, for “eating more fruit”;

There are movements Religious and Movements mundane,

Economic and social, both coloured and plain;

There are Movements Surrealist and Academic

In music, art, literature – highly polemic:

There are so many Movements, and most problematic –

What I want’s a Movement for just being static!

                   Mozart

Here was an instrument that could detect

The hidden harmonies inherent in

This universe, this earth, this little sphere

Of flesh and spirit we inhabit here,

And cage them in a dozen little notes

Upon his manuscripts, alive and clear

To be interpreted

By other instruments and other hands

In music ordinary man can hear . . .

And hearing understands.

Dorothea Spears

             Museum garden Stellenbosch

Here, in a world of tension where the feet

Of time beat their accelerating rhyme.

And rhythm in seconds, minutes, hours and days

At such a pace as leaves no space for rests,

For silences between the sounds, that shape

The music of our contrapuntal ways

To harmony and beauty, phrase on phrase:

Here, near the throbbing heart of this busy mart

A pause is written, a silence, a brief retreat

From the presto accelerando of the street,

And discord is resolved in a paean of praise.

Dorothea Spears

           Music of Autumn

The golden song of Autumn has begun…

The soft pale-yellow notes of alien strings

That learned the tune in Lombardy have run

The opening bars piano… now there rings

The russet funfair of the trellised vines

With scarlet obligato here and there…

Crescendo and accelerando signs…

And all the oaks take up the golden air.

Ethereal is the harmony at dawn

When mutes of mist are fitted. With the light

Flute shadows race and trill and are withdrawn…

But when the setting sun blares forth in might –

Beneath the Arch Conductor’s upraised hand

Great chords of colour crash across the land!

“Veritas”

Constantia, C.P.

        Must You See a Word to Feel It?

The exquisite subtlety of a beautiful thought

Or beautiful thing – the bloom on a butterfly’s wing –

The dust of a dream at dusk – can never be caught

On the prong of a word, impaled for a clown or a king.

Would anyone think to drink of the Holy Grail

From a vessel polished and put on the mantelshelf?

Or capture from nebulous, inexpressibly pale

Reflections painted on glass, the inmost self?

Our cups of clay are crude; our silver and gold

Inadequate for half-guessed, unpressed wine.

It is the qualities we cannot hold

That lift a man above the seen design.

It is the hidden meaning behind the word

That holds the shape of the soul, the song of the bird.

Avondster

Klein Constantia, C.P.

           My Dear

How sweet is dawn!

The dew shines pure

On the chaste brown earth,

Like pearls on the lawn,

As dear demure

As a babe at birth.

From fragrant sleep

The violets blue

As a babe’s bright eyes

As shyly peep,

When dawn dips through

In the Eastern skies.

The gentle dove

Departs her nest;

New day is dawn,

As pure as love

In a Virgin’s breast.

How dear is dawn!

So is my sweet-

As pure and fair

As the day-dawn clear

Wherein do meet

All virtues rare-

So is my Dear!

            My Dear Dog,

A warden in the forest stopped and said

“No dogs allowed in the Woods, not even led.”

Throughout the week you watch and guard, content,

The house and grounds and humans, God has lent.

But Sunday was your day. From early light

(I think you must have dreamed of it all night)

Anticipation wagged your eager tail –

So confident your humans would not fail.

“Come on, get up,” you said, “How can you lie

When Sunday stills the Forest in Tokai?”
I’ll not deny we loved the outing too,

The breath of forest air, the walk with you;

The chance to stretch your limbs as God had meant,

In safety, where speedsters never went,

Nor foul the pavements for the dainty feet

Of those who own a private privy seat.

The strong arm of the law will have to be stronger

Were you to guard our homes and us no longer!

But suddenly the Law has slammed this door.

The feat has gone forth, none knows what for.

No matter that you love it, that you need it:

The Government, our Masters have decreed it.

No, these trees don’t belong to God, my friends –

Our Masters own them all, and there it ends.

Dorothea Spears

Airlie Close

Constantia C.P.

          My Dog Doesn’t Live at Langa

I look long in his love-returning eyes,

And weep, conscious of all those other eyes

That sleep too suddenly, too soon, too deep.

I think I cannot bear the emptiness

That weights this quivering air: too many gates

Are haunted by shaggy shapes no longer there.

Too many homes (with little enough to prize)

Will wait for love-returning eyes in vain

Where pain shares the darkness with despair.

Airlie Close

Constantia, C.P.

           My Face to the Sea

My face to the sea

I walk at the wind’s edge,

Feel its sharp teeth

Cutting thin strips of flesh

To lie on the drift

Of pebbles on the shore.

The way of the wind

Drags at my mind’s edge,

Tearing thin strips

From the slough of my brain

To lie on the shift

Of seaweed on the rocks

My face to the sea

I walk at the world’s edge

Feel each new wave

Tearing thin strips of thought

To bandage my heart

Cut off by the tide.

        My Father (may God rest his soul)

Delighted in the changing sea

At one with the unpredictable whole

That spoke to him as never to me

He loved the feel of the helm in his hand,

The heeling hull, and the taunted sail

On standing on the rockbound land

To watch the devastating gale

Shatter the ocean on the rocks

To break in a startled spray and rise

Before the reverberating shackles

Reaching for unreachable skies.

It was the sea in him that we

Who loved him never wholly knew

Or understood – the untameable sea

That must inevitably break through.

        MY FRIEND

Of all the mercies of His love,

Whose love can never end,

I value than all else above,

And thank God for—my Friend.

My Friend, who bids me use my wings;

Who soothes away the pain
If I should fall, whose fond faith clings
And helps me rise again:

Whose very silence speaks to me
       More plain than others’ word,

And counsels courage inwardly
        When hope is long deferred.

God grant my Friend a friend as fine.

As full of constancy,

And simple faith, and love divine.

As my Friend’s been to me.

                    My Friend

I’d like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me

I’d like to be the help that you’ve been always glad to be

I’d like to mean as much to you each minute of the day

As you have meant old friend of mine, to me along the way.

And that’s why I am wishing now that I could but repay

A portion of the gladness that you’ve strewn along my way

And could I have but just one wish this only would it be

I’d like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me.

           My Heart Is Dead

My heart is dead. The beauty that I see

Is just as magic as in olden days

When sunrise seemed a song of glowing praise

And sunset was a rippling rhapsody.

My heart is dead. The colours blaze on tree

And flower as they were wont to do. The ways

Still glow with wondrous hues: as sweet they lays

Trilled by bright-winged birds – but not for me.

For me – my heart is dead. I see it all –

The beauty that was wont to stir me so,

To such a rapture as was kin to pain,

But my dead heart responds not to its call

My reason sees – that is fine, I know –

But, God! To feel the pulse of it again!

            My Own Pain I Can Bear

My own pain I can bear nor ask reprieve,

Who weave the pattern of my life, the woof,

The warp and weft of it; content to reeve

The dark and dim and bright, atone, aloof.

The personal and individual pain

That you and I and each of us must wear,

Regarded relatively, seems a vain

And trivial thing compared to that we share.

There is no insult that can rend the vesture

Of self, but time can deftly mend the tear.

But not so easy to forgive The gesture

That rips another's robe beyond repair

My own pain I can bear, but not the sum

Of mortal suffering, immense and dumb!

Dorothea Spears

                  My Son

I stood within the silent Minister, mute

 With reverence before the mighty dead,

And through the solemn hush of centuries

The laggard shadows crept with stealthy treat

O’er nave and chancel, through the hallowed shrine :

So silent moved I through the tristful gloom.

With halting steps, in awe, yet unafraid

I came unto the Unknown Warrior’s tomb.

Here he was laid, he who might be my son!

Resigned, I knelt, my heart attuned to hear

His message, should he speak, and all my soul

Divined His radiant presence standing near.

I bowed my head in rapture. It was well!

A lambent lustre lit in the darkling nave-

No father could begrudge his only son

Such holy honour and so high a grave.

With solaced heart I rose, and turning, saw

A lonely woman standing, sombre clad

Beside the tomb, unconscious of the place,

With eyes ineffable, and sweetly sad

As though she held communion with unknown

Mysterious powers. Loth to break the spell

Wrought by the holy place, with reverent step

I sought to pass.  It seemed as though there fell

A curtain twixt the seen and the unseen ;

For just a glimpse the softly shining eyes

Wore such a slight amaze as one who wakes

From happy sleep, and wonders in surprise

Which world is real, the waking or the dream.

She spoke, and all the lines that poignant Pain

Had traced upon her face were soothed away,

As furrowed earth is smoothed by Summer rain.

She said “He is my son!” and in her eyes

All luminous with love and pride, I read

My own unuttered longing, and I knew

I could not rob her or her honoured dead;

Although it was not her’s, but mine, the dust

Enshrined there.  Too well I knew the break

Of hopeless ; so, mute with sympathy

I bow my head in silence for her sake.

I left her dreaming there, implicitly

Believing in her frank and guileless pride

It was her son that they had brought to be

By Empire mourned, for whose fair sake he died;

Wept o’er by kings and rulers, honoured high

Above all men, and laid at length to rest

Among the sleeping heroes of the years;

Within those sacred walls the chiefest guest.

But I – I knew he was not her’s but mine-

My only son! And so I could be brave;

He should have honour through unending years

And every nation should revere his grave!

My son – yet her’s, and your’s, beneath that sod.

But when the last word’s said – a Son of God.