Janus Poem, or That Truth Has Never Left Us

A door spins on granite dais, gateway
     from nothing to nothing,
          the plenary gate

made from lodestone -- what passes its field
     the aperture attracts,
          assumes.

All the maps mark this hinge
     as start and end, the summation
          of navigators' work:

for here the compass points to itself
     in a spaceless labyrinth,
          the door a mystery and a trap

blind and exitless.
     Thus we swivel through
          to the void elusive,
       
illusive, and invisible
     that, though empty, fills us.
          And as with time
         
we have our lives inside it,
     though for all our charting
            we have fallen into both --

duration and the living-gate,
     an absent place
          turning cloaked in the universe.




 
     What flies around the gate
           is the wind elusive,
illusive, and invisible --
     we cannot keep hold of it,
          but it carries us through
and, as with truth,
we have our lives inside it.