The Sage Poem by Patrick Dennis

Here am I in my eighty-ninth year - said the sage -
and now my writings, though much praised in great councils,
are as straw to me. I look at them and think
Are these works mine? Is this the labour of my years?
So flat, narrow and lifeless now they seem.
And yet - - and yet - - - what precision! What judgment!
What weighings! What balance! What purpose!
Oh, and directions true as the compass point
that I swear there was a greater hand upon my hand.
In awe, I see now
I have made more than a human hand can make.

But lately some strange presence sears my heart
and winnows my soul. I fear
I am no longer myself. I who have been
the mapmaker of mind worlds now look on my works
as those of a stranger.
Cartographers don't see as I do now
the white snowpeaks to the left of the red sweep of road;
nor the Giottos at Assisi; nor even the colours of sunset at Uluru -
they being passion plunged in maps.
I, you know, am lately caught up
in some strange wind-presence of living fire -
how else to describe it I know not - joy
and pain it is, and - well - I have - I have
abandoned my work.

How strange it is that one, as I, so made over
to ways, to places, to sights, to sounds;
to the feel of sand and night tropic air;
to waters, to tribes, to mystic cities;
to country roads and hard tracks of mind;
to one sure goal -
should have himself known - not these, but only paper
on which to argue and play the scene.

Nearing my end now I sicken of paper, of maps.
Maps are for the travelling public, for the lost,
for the pilgrim. I, at the gates of the Emerald City,
chaff my works for the bonfire, for the celebration, for the passover.