The First Vision of Eternity

The First Vision of Eternity

Brendon Sylvester

The words of the youth,
Son of the Wise,
Pilgrim in the wilderness.

Behold the glory
and be still.
For all is glory,
Glory and a shadow of glory,
Transpositions of eternity
In death’s drear pall.

You have not lived aright
Till your song cries when the gull cries,
Till you’ve stood in silence
(But all the while the rising, silent violin)
In skies of grass starred with thundering bison,
Paved with a river of fire,
And said to your friend,
We are drawing near Eternity.

Till you’ve mowed tall grass with the farmhands,
Bundled it up for hay
And slept in heaven’s welcoming dome.

Till you’ve joyed in the toil
And joyed with the toiler
Your duty is not done.

But repent of the birds
And the trickling brook
The whispering rest in the shade—
Confess the fireside grins
The thoughtful shadows
And the cave’s warm ease,
Of ease or rest ye may not yet deuize.

But the road aches
With the weight of many miles
And the load of mountains.

And you must walk
Between the meadow
And the rock,
The shadow
And the fire,
The silence
And the lyre.

The divergence of
The breath and the bone
The lily and the ash
Converge in the marriage of love and death.

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Brendon Sylvester
Poet

Photography by Katie Azi