A Hermetic Poem by Rocco Jarman

Here I am, a traveller,
on my way to where,
I do not know.

The child of two houses, with no home.

There exists in me,
the reigns and traces of my past,
holding me to nature and to a primal legacy,
an unbroken line of existence
that goes all the way back
to the very beginning of the world.
Forces which sustain me, drive me,
and have sustained and driven all my ancestors,
to survive.
The tools; gifts given,
to keep my heart beating in my chest,
to keep the fire burning in my belly,
to find a way for the seed of life in me to find its way,
through pain and fear and adversity,
to the next cycle,
of each day, each moon, each season
and each life.

And in me also, the high window.
My consciousness.
The source of light,
by which I might come to see
how it is I got here.
How the caked mud on my feet
was collected on the journey
winding back into the forgotten miles behind me,
how I am held down, by the great pull of the earth,
and how it is both a blessing but quite inescapable.

And with it a feint realisation
that I cannot quite decide which I love more,
the wish to surrender to the safety of it,
or the prodigal longing to defy it.

Because, through that very window
there is the other great pull.
The light of a dawn waking in me,
the promise of an infinite sunrise to which
the lark of my soul sings.
The light by which I may come
to that vast and unmuddied ocean in me,
the sublimely undulating silence.

The stillness by which all is known.
The stillness in which everything moves,
and all movement is held.

This stillness is in me.
It is me.

I choose to remember.

I choose,
to surrender.