Soul Voyager Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

Vast oceans of desire
floating between two red poles
into whose void we project all that we might be.
Nurture us O blessed darkness
as we lie enwombed unknowing,
every nerve vibrating with energy,
that we awaken transformed into spinthers of light.
Nurture us O blessed silence
that we may hear music in the forests
and see angels in the streets.

Sired in a world of infinite possibilities we are weightless -
borne through us, meaning floods like divine semen
impregnating those who are spirit-born -
by which love calls into being new worlds of the imagination;
splitting and discarding all that we have trusted,
causing us to fall as sunbeams /moonbeams /starbursts on the unlighted earth.


I and you are one
dancing for each other,
like two (s) elves around the access tree
in a garden in a park all own
at sexes and heaven.
Where there were ten, now none.

Bare mossy springs besides the stone fruit
where the 1 of conscious desire
passes throu the 0 of all that is longed for.


Alert in the morning light I am not-I
who was then by the chalk streams
where the mermaids weave above the hatchments
their mysterious tapestries.

Now on the dry and pitiless road
where the mounds rise like thighs beside the way
summoning the energy of my ancestors
to guide me on the path,
I who am not-I walk unmoving
and thus rise to prophetic height
visible from centuries all-seeing and unseen
in the sanctuary where the sea surges furiously
within the battlements of the waterless hill;
yet the hawthorn, lone victor in a bloodless
fight, draws water from the clashing armies of
desire buried within … which is my jubilant
destination and enigmatic nursery.


August 1998. Subsequently set to music for a cappella quartet