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Sojourn
By Les Blough

“To forget one's ancestor's is to be a brook without a source, a tree without root”

- Ancient Taoist proverb

 

 

 

Sojourn

 

I’ve had it wrong, these many years

in quarters dark, unframed nights,

to ask in all sincerety,

for you to take your leave in flights,

from your responsibility.

 

To brandish arms and bandaliers

in this small place would be for nought,

and spent in vain obscurity

not here to archive what you’ve wrought

nor sage to weigh your sophistry

 

Abiding in those lofty spheres

enduring watch for nascent heed

to calls from our antiquity

their pagan whispers bid me flee

or find a new divergency

 

Midnight foreign sojourn brings

affright and wonder in the main

where voices versed in parity

with rythmic chant and long refrain

I learn a new temerity          

 

Introduce me to your friends!

Show me where and how you live!

We danced in this festivity,

mothers, fathers led the way,

Abounding love in levity!

 

 

- Les Blough
June 21, 2008

 

Note: Written in remembrance and honor of Hans Garrett Blough on the 18th anniversary of his journey to the other side. My son Hans died at the age of 18 in an accident in Brookline, Massachusetts on June 28, 1990. He was a compassionate young man with a keen social conscience. He graduated from high school a month before his death and planned to enter college at the University of California, Santa Barbara in September, 1990. Below his photo in his high school annual he quoted Malcolm X, "No man gives up power willingly. It must be taken from him". Hans' last political act was to take his friends to the Esplanade in Boston to hear Nelson Mandela speak. The poem above tells us that we must not wait for the dead to visit us; rather, it is important that we go to them in our meditations. As in the ceremonies and rituals of many indigenous peoples, we can learn from the collective consciousness of "the old ones". Traveling back the path of our ancestors we receive guidance for our lives here. A similar message is found in a related poem, reflecting on the life of Hans' paternal grandfather, Lester M. Blough Sr.: THE PAGAN.

 

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