Psychologist,
my mental spider,
hero of time,
what do you make of this?
" Six days sailing
north of Britain, "
wrote the unknown
sailor
circa 150 A.D.
" lies the Utmost Island
of the Sullen Sea. "

In such a sea,
solus,
I lay at zero,
plumb,
with no way back
. . . . . the dream
had not quite passed
(like an
early Greek hero,
I thought, of obscure origin.
There was still
an instant
image from it
of deserted streets
and dust and paper
flying around,
by which I knew
that the end was approaching
though no way out
appeared yet from
that turbulent night
of continual alarums
in which the human race
came out of the ocean
in frightful import,
that Passion
staggering to imagine
in its ordeal,
and passed through time
before my eyes,
I swear it,
I meanwhile unreal
as in a fever.

No sooner thought
then it was image
and like a great wave
broke
and lapped at the shore.

After which these words
from the stern,
underlying order
of things
were spoken
in my head,
not loud
but with a heavy
stress
in the mouth,
exact and absolute
as a stone engraving:
" Pursuant to the Rocks,
Thorns! "

I could make nothing
of this but poetry
but the utterance was darker
and impregnable,
not to be looked at closely
nor transcribed
by a stylus on the scale
of a lens in
a butterfly's eye
It was meant
to guide me,
of that I was sure.
That is how I came
to know
how God spoke with Moses.