Unacceptable Prophet
(J.C.S.)
There was always distance in his eyes
From walking much upon the heights alone,
And sweeping seas and mountain tops and skies
And far horizons of a vast unknown.
His little people could not understand
The devastating vastness of his vision.
He saw a world. They only saw their land
They spurned his wider wisdom with derision
Upon his Sinaitic peak he saw
A new horizon and a greater goal,
The process of a Universal Law
Of healing, making holy, making whole.
But in our valley with our viewless verve,
We built a little golden calf to serve.
Dorothea Spears
Unbowed
Though storm and tempest fill the day
And make a holocaust of life,
I shall lift up my head and say –
Thank God, thank God for strife!
Thank God for the chance to try my steel
Against the champion blade of Fate,
To parry his blows, his wounds to feel,
And still fight on, elate.
Thank God for the friends that still prove true
When days are black and life one span
Of pain; for the courage to see it through
And prove myself again.
And Oh! Thank God for the hopes that dwell
Beyond to-day’s soul searing scenes –
For only one who has been through Hell
Can know what Heaven means.
Unexpected Encounters
I have seen Joy
Running up the garden path
With the shining face of a young boy,
Holding creation in his hand
Like a new toy,
Wearing the guise of Spring:
Or standing on the brink
Of a pool in a shadowed stream
Cupping his hands to drink
The cool water of a new dream.
Whatever his guise
You can recognise Joy
By the light in his eyes
And the song he sings –
Like larks that rise on soundless wings
To lose themselves in the skies.
You never know when you wake, you never know
Whatever the day of the week
If this day is the day that Joy will pass your way
And stop to speak.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
Unfledged
There is no song but shall outlive the singer.
There is no wrong but shall be shrived at last
However long the unrelenting finger
Of shadow pointing darkly to the past.
There is no gift but shall reward the giver.
No love but shall return a thousandfold;
No rivulet but flows − into the river
And hears at last the ocean's secret told.
There is no soul but can possess the future,
No farthest goal beyond the nearest reach:
No parting of the everlasting suture
Uniting God and mankind each to each.
Should man be satisfied with earthly things,
Who is created with potential wings?
Dorothea Spears
13.12.55
Unforeseen consequence
It is a strange thing - or is it strange?
A death should bring a synthesis more sure
More willing to endure, than life:
And silence seal a bond
That's more secure than many words
To bind divergent humankind
In temporary unity of common grief.
This assignation with assassination
Mingled men more certainly
In dedication to a common land
Than all the years of argument
Or fears of recrimination:
For one brief moment linked the hearts of men
By shock that all could share and understand.
Dorothea Spears
UNIT
Behind it and behind it and behind-
Have we not caught the thought? Have we not
caught
The breathing of the countless ones who bought
Our simplest comfort, and the ties that bind
All ages and all men? Are we so blind
We cannot glimpse the countless minds that thought
Our every use, the countless hands that wrought
To benefit the body of mankind?
All, all are one; the ones who planned
And dreamed and dug the clay and shaped the bowl
And made the spindle (can we understand?)
Are units in the Unit of the Whole,
Inseparable as the brain and hand ...
Are souls within the one immortal Soul.
Unloneliness
Aloneness is the only place to find
Unloneliness that's lost or left behind:
Not in a lover's arms, however fond,
Nor in the eyes of friends, though they be kind.
Ephemeral flesh is powerless to bind
Eternal happiness in any mind.
Immortal consciousness exists beyond
Mortality, the manifested blind.
Behind the beautiful transiency designed
For passing comfort, reality's divined,
The permanent unloneliness, the bond
That welds divinity and humankind.
In high aloneness man can free the mesh
Of loneliness enveloping all flesh.
Dorothea Spears
Unseen But Heard
Where is the nest of the singing bird that like a lark
Suddenly drenches a grey day with bright song,
Or like a nightingale that fills the dark
With pale wonder all the night long
When the stars are stark?
I must scatter scarlet berries and wheaten crumbs
And keep the flashing fountains of the heart filled,
Lest this shy bird should fly when winter comes.
And all the song be stilled,
Dorothea Spears
UNSPOKEN LOVE
You do not know. I greet
you through the years;
I meet you in your home where love burns bright,
And day by day I look into that light
And turn away with dazed eyes full of tears.
You do not know 1
Sometimes I faint with fears
Lest my sad secret should surprise your sight;
I drill my heart to duty through the night.
My heart that must not speak but always hears.
You do not know, else you would pity me;
God save me that—and blame yourself and say,
“I should have been less
kind.” Ah no, the end
Was fore-ordained : what has been was to be.
And so I smile and hide my heart each day:
Please God you shall not ever know, my friend.
Untied god
The Old Town House
It has the still serenity of one
Who's not surrendered his integrity
To that dictator, Time; nor bowed the knee
To this new god that desecrates the Sun
And bids men neither stand nor walk but run;
To this new Baal men call Efficiency,
And sacrifice the truth that makes them free,
The silence in themselves where peace is won.
Time's underlings, the Hours, have called in vain
Their urgent tunes: these walls cannot forget
More leisured measures, and these shall retain
The tempo of the stately minuet.
Within this courtyard ghosts of peace remain
And Time has signed a truce unbroken yet.
Dorothea Spears
23.11.55
Come from the cities, ye men who still dream.
And list with me here at the
marge of the stream !
The song of the city is all out of tune
But still in the woodlands the turtle-doves croon.
While still ye have lips learned to sing, oh, come soon !
The city is crowded with hatred and pride,
But still in the woodlands the spaces are wide.
While yet ye have hearts that can love, come aside!
Twitter of pigeons
Seeking a mate :
Blossom and pollen
And kindness of Fate.
Peace and contentment.
Blue skies above—
God in the woodlands
Proclaiming His love.
Come from the cities, ye men who still dream,
And learn with me here at the marge of the
stream !
The city is greedy, discordant, and grey.
But still in the woodlands there’s silence to
pray.
While yet ye have souls that can feel, come away!
Urge
The willow bends to kiss the stream:
The waters murmur happily,
And great, and daring is the dream
They carry outwards to the sea.
Ah, little brook, it’s lonely there,
No trees to bend above you,
No friendly, quiet kine to stare,
No clinging banks to love you.
You will be lost in that great tide:
The ocean will not hear your voice;
But here the grasses seek your side
And at your song the trees rejoice.
I know you will not, cannot stay:
You hurry by the thirsty land.
The deeps have called and you’re away –
Ah, little brook, I understand.
For I have felt the mighty urge,
And I too, turn from safe devotion
To where the restless breakers surge
On life’s relentless ocean.
And I too, shall be tempest tossed,
And many a time we both shall yearn
For the safe meadows we have lost:
And know that there is no return.