for decker

I Call You Home.

Come out of the dark
O shadowman, silent appealer.
By me stand crowned with sunshine
Our eyes that still blue, haunted by history.
Look where I show thee
Your rightful place
Where each should be
Serene, young, happy
The cosmos straight;
Simple and no grims hid.

It is Heaven, a great and gentle English park
Green, gold, the waters divine sparkling.
All heavy in huge peaceful summer
Masses of intricate flowers, bright fruits.
Vasty blue skies set it in gold
An enamel icon to hide in your soul.
And look neath the trees;
A young man, waiting, lonely, asking
Where did it go? this home of my soul?
He waits still, listening in the sweet breeze
That clear soft singing.
See that is your house
Then it was white and radiant.
Its waited so long to hear laughter, children.
And the man is you, the place your Heaven
As it began and must be again.
Or never be happy or easy, no welcome ever.

Put my icon in your heart - a map, a compass
What you need in your heaven.
And work to go back to that.
Just- don't go living alone
Wisdom is born of two hearts and love
Its grief which grins madly on his own.


Now look where we are. The gas foul swirls
The men in mud fighting, dying,
Bayonets flashing,the shells blasting
Mud and men and sticky wet air
Its all brown, mud, scarlet and grey.
A helmet against the actinic split night
Deepset eyes looking down, O blue!
Now we see at last! at last!!
We have always been in each others past.
A strong hand lifts the destroyed
Shoulder to shoulder we charge the top over
Hoping and dying and in darkness crying for mother...

We can stay like this or go back to that
And do it by more secret wars,
The gifted healers and warriors
Overthrowing evil in whatever guise it hangs.
Or like me we all die trying; trying
And let them see that;
That you are, each one, worth that.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx gerry stevens, 03/10/2009