Open the door of mysteries
Let me go through.
Cloaked, and a little lonely
Like all who set out on journeys alone.
Yet scarcely looking back,
Since each step must be taken
with attention, each step counts:
Already you are elsewhere,
Gone ahead of yourself.
You must spiral in
through yet more skins
(though many have been stripped off since this began),
turn inward like the whorled ear
to delicate chambers of nacreous dawn.
The turret’s stairs wind down,
cold steel at heel and arm.
Here at the bottom, or another time,
after one or other descent,
the secret may be revealed.
The mystery of mysteries perhaps will be:
another door.
Or should you turn, go up the stair?
Back to where that fresh outer air
Where everything -
bird, rose, water stream,
the light on leaves -
manifests the mystery.
