Often I am permitted…

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
BY ROBERT DUNCAN

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It  only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

---

Often I am permitted to return to a small town 

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
 that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
 an eternal pasture folded in all thought
 so that there is a hall therein...

How much I only love

those verses would have been mine

That I could have written them

it is so near to the heart of mine

an eternal pasture folded in all thought but I kept

so that there was a hill and val

there’s between a fold I was told

But no more I am permitted to return to a Meadow

that is not mine but a  place of that exists no more

so that I sat on a stone near a river and wept

Of all that  a place and a bird that nestled it’s home

where I was born is a small town but none of which

it is only a dream of the grass blown

and a river running through it

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