I wanted to compose
an invocation
to the coming year,
but the old year's passionate
desires still lingered,
unassuaged;
I thought to pray,
to make desire and craving
disappear, but Life's voice,
patient, omnipresent,
murmured counsel in my ear:
"You will not be done
with me, till I choose
to relinquish you…
Desires and cravings
must receive their due.
While you may think
that you are weary,
noone gives you leave
to rest. If you tread
in my footsteps,
sorrow will erase
itself. Look up, where
the planets and the stars
are gleaming overhead!
When you have fulfilled your quest,
it will be time to summon them -
three wise women out of myth -
Clotho, who has served you best:
look at the silks she spins for you!
Unerring sense of warp and weft,
such colours of the inner eye
as artifice cannot possess!
Lachesis, who took care of your
apprenticeship, and chose the lyre -
an instrument your fingers
tuned with more ardour
than aptitude - but you have sat
in classrooms of the winds
and seas and heaven's eyes,
and studied
languages of clouds
and dreamt
in Hyperborean…
In due course, it will be the turn
of Atropos. You must give back
your soul, intact, when she arrives
with shears or scales…
I hope its thread
will pass through prisms
shining as a lunar dawn,
so that I, your life, will know
that I endowed you not in vain,
with all the gifts I took such pains
to garner at your hour of birth.
Now I have put you to the test,
prepare your spirit to invoke
the mystery hidden in time's nest,
the phoenix year about to hatch…"