Pilgrim Heart

ePilgrim Heartf

 

(Or To Finish, One Must Stary)

 

I know not where this star may lead;

I would not brave the night

 

I would not be

The fool that did -

 

I am a child of light!

 

But I suppose it must be so:

 

To finish,

I must start

 

And naught but darkness

Rounds a star[1]

 

That bids the pilgrim heart.

---

[1] Paris believed that everything a “pilgrim heart” experiences is tinged by a sense of sadness, even the most joyous of his adventures. He may live in the moment, but he is mindful of what it will be like when the party is over, and he is left to his thoughts. He is the proverbial “foreigner in a foreign land,” and he is every moment homesick for a place he has never actually been. However, the poet did not think that such individuals were necessarily religious thinkers, such as Khalil Gibran, as he also considered Fyodor Dostoevsky and nineteenth-century German nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche, to be prime examples of such a person.

 

 

Author's Note

This piece is a part of my revised work, previously posted at WritersCafe.org. It is from a book in which some of the entries are written in prose or poetic prose.