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GHAZAL 46
Francis Brabazon
The trouble with this business of illusion is its bright seeming—
The palaces and waters of it on the empty plain gleaming.
The thirst-crazed traveller thinks, This is the Beloved's city—
The end of travail; coolness and ease and dew-lipped pity.
Not to go forward is also to miserably perish
When the sun burns in an inverted aluminum dish.
To go on or not to go on, is equally disaster...
As this point one is ready to meet the Perfect Master:
The Far-traveller, the Journey-completer, the Returner;
The Cradler, the Builder of cities and their Burner.
He brings us mile after cruel mile to meet him on the plain
Of no palaces and waters to build him an arbored fane.
In dryness is greenness; in desolate places the Friend
Who is pilgrim and path and its stations and journey's end.
IN DUST I SING, p. 46
2012 © Avatar's Abode Trust
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