From the Upanishads
“Lead me from the unreal to the real.”
The web of dream and waking fills my mind
as daylight fills a glass. My weary path
does not fork but leads back to where I’m from.
A lamp, a chair, a window – now my old
familiar room is speaking. It is not
speaking English. In the woods outside,
behold the trees I climbed. How tall they were!
As the mountaineer reaches the summit,
the mountain disappears from under him.
The stopped clock tells the time; the blue
ocean parts neatly, like a loaf of bread.
This is not the journey never made;
this is not the futility of achievement.
This is the painted crab scuttling off the wall,
the long years unwinding and the glory they reveal.
To know the light, we learn to know the dark.
To smile, we learn the many ways to weep.
We hear the nightingale to hear the lark,
and only wake when we have been asleep.
John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023), both available free online. John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.
Amethyst Review 