Temple of My Familiar

I'm reading this by Alice Walker. So far I am really enjoying it. There is one passage I wanted to share. With all the crap going on in the world these words just leave me longing.

"He began to sing ever so gently, to his wife and children. A song about a country that wore green as its favorite dress; a land of rivers and of boats that from a distance made one think of the pods of dried vanilla beans. He sang of the people who came to this country long ago, from a land called Sun, how they'd discovered the river that flows through the ocean - and knew also of the one that flows through the heavens but had no means to travel it - and of how they met the people already there and how some of them ran off together to share each other's understanding of the world, and founded great civilizations almost by accident, though great civilization never notice or boast about whether they are great; and how, over time, these fell, and the people went off in all directions and lived the simple life of small peoples everywhere. Hunting and fishing and praying and making love and having babies."

As I die

I hold my sword

My only friend

And pray that Oden

Will take me home

don't be a vagina and post that poem again...dammit..

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule-

From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover

For the tears that drip all over;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters- lone and dead,-

Their still waters- still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead,-

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily,-

By the mountains- near the river

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-

By the grey woods,- by the swamp

Where the toad and the newt encamp-

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,-

By each spot the most unholy-

In each nook most melancholy-

There the traveler meets aghast

Sheeted Memories of the Past-

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by-

White-robed forms of friends long given,

In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-

For the spirit that walks in shadow

'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!

But the traveler, traveling through it,

May not- dare not openly view it!

Never its mysteries are exposed

To the weak human eye unclosed;

So wills its King, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the fringed lid;

And thus the sad Soul that here passes

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule

can you feel that, necca?