Before you touch the bolt that locks this gate
Be warned. There's no return where you are going.
A sword is tinder at the touch of fate
And crumbles in a way beyond your knowing.
Something I've heard, but something less I tell.
An old man knows, advises - young men smile,
Blow slug-horns, chink a latch, or clank a bell.
I've watched many a one this weary while.
You can hear the nightingales, I won't deny.
They always sing for eager souls like you,
Perched on their boughs of possibility,
Most vaguely heard and only vaguely true.
And they are more, perhaps, than mere tradition.
They must exist, though none come back to say
How they are feathered, or what rare nutrition
Keeps them, piping their sad peculiar lay.
Gardens there are and Queens, no doubt, a-walking,
White blooms adrift on gold and marvelous hair.
Young men in murmurous dreams have heard them talking,
Leaped up, like you, and entered...vanished...where?
For all I know, the castle's just a dream,
A shadow piled to mask a dangerous ledge,
A fantasy blown from devils' lungs in steam,
Made permanent here, just on a chasm's edge
Where you will tremble in a swoon of falling
And yet plunge upward through the unearthly mist
To hear once more the voice that you heard calling
And win at last those lips you would have kissed,
Even as you touch the bolt that locks this gate,
Smiling, with patience such as fits old men
Who prophesy. Ah yes, what you create
You'll surely find - but never come back again.
-Donald Davidson
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