After the hard climb and the exhausted dreaming you will come to a place where he with whom you have walked this far will stop will stand beside you on the treacherous steep path
and stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame
that blocks your vision of what comes after.
and stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame
that blocks your vision of what comes after.
And that one who you thought would accompany you always, who held your face tenderly a little while in his hands— who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass and washed from your cheeks, the tear-tracks — he is telling you now that all that stands between you and everything you have known since the beginning is this: this wall.
Between yourself and the beloved, between yourself and your joy, the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume whatever solidness this is you call your life, and send you out, a tremor of heat, a radiance, a changed flickering thing?
