Reconciliation

For Ravi de Costa

In my tradition, I begin

not with a greeting

or a welcome, but with

a plunging into the heart

of things.  My true name,

which circumstance leaves me

unable to pronounce, means

The Visitor Will Repeat.

In this brief sojourn

through life’s feast-hall

(flew in from winter, only

to vanish into same) we are

enmeshed in the travail,

in sorrows of hearth

and harbour.  But these,

of course, soon pass.

A long-dead storyteller

warned me I was born

to the struggle.  The struggle

for what?  Books said the struggle:

your fields will know no

reckoning, no avowal, no

release.  And yet, somehow,

good will come of this.