XXI   THE WORLD

“Around every circle another can be drawn…
and under every deep a lower deep opens.”
        - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I The Dancing Bear

I am a giant dancing bear.
No longer mistress of the waters,
Fortuna watches
from her spinning wheel corner

as I dance with bulls & lions
in a ring of moons,
& juggle fire
in cosmic sunlight.

II The World as Shiva

“I am the dancing god who makes the world his sport.”
- National Film Board of Canada

Nothing & everything, I am
the centre of the wheel.

As a flurry of atoms
I summon myself
from the 4 corners
& wrap
my flowing robes
around the world.

I make wreaths
of evergreen boughs,
I spin cartwheels through
Fortuna’s wheel,
I live in the lion’s mouth,
I enchain and am enchained,
I seek and am sought.

Like a crayfish I continually surface,
& waves continually engulf me.
Lovers dream of me & fear me,
I am in their candle flame,
I shift the world to many angles,
through me they become each other,
through them I become the world.

II The Round of the Dance
O the round of the dance as a figure circles
solely around its own self,
a butterfly hovering
over a flower that’s not there.

The flame of the lantern is lit,
the moth emerges from its cocoon,
the eagle flies to the nest
& settles its broad wings on its home circle,
surrounded by the circle
of the distant blue
of all the world’s mountains,

then suddenly the setting sun
skims the velvet tops
of the entire ring of mountains.

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