Now that at dusk, the doors of the dimensions,

Glowing, are growing more thin and transparent

Like the seeds of Honesty, or Japanese screens,

I sometimes see, slightly by glancing, not looking,

Silhouettes of shadows, shades more real, more solid

Than those which feeble sunlight makes wane weakly

Here on earth.

 

These, seen only with the mind’s eye, lie outside the frame

We call normality, exist equally, and all have done

Since the universe banged into being, with God

Slamming the door in wrath on the mess of Eden.

 

What must they be like, these phantom fields,

That are in fact as real as ours, yet not?

Does very corn sigh there, at the passing of your beloved,

Like it used to, here on earth? Here on earth.

 

As it is in heaven, and always expanding into joy

For ever shall be, amen, along paths

That link stars in patterns, along paths

That we dream are real, in a formal garden,

World without end.

 

Where we retrace our treading, follow footsteps,

Threading the string through hands not solid,

See fragments, fractured, seen at an angle, glimpsed,

The wrong way down kaleidoscopes of time

 

And somewhere near, beyond our death’s bright portal,

Lie lands immortal.