INTRODUCTION

"The road is constantly deedless
and yet there is nothing, not being done"

 

The title of the present book might be regarded as a reference to Taoism and one could classify some of the poems as yin and others as yang which, however, would be a rather incomplete approach. The collection is in fact one long poem, a lyrical meditation of the poet, who visited the Far East more than fifty times and, amongst others, rendered Chinese and Korean poetry.
"The Road" contains references to Greek mythology, such as Pegasus, the winged horse with the golden bridle, which created fountains with its hooves, or to Nyx, goddess of the night and daughter of Chaos. But the collection equally contains references to Hinduism and to ZEN Buddhism, to the "Gateless Gate" or imagined  gate, barriers existing only in the mind, which one has to cross to reach "The Road". The majority  of the poems were written in India, which obviously has left traces in the collection.
"The Road" can also be regarded as the road of mankind: its past, its present and - its unpredictable - future.  But it is, more than anything else, the road of the poet himself, a lyrical record of his personal experience of various cultures, religions, and philosophies, in which one will find Western thinking in harmony with Oriental values put in their old, still up to date, or new, contemporary context and experience
.

WHAT DID THE OLD PROPHETS see
but not describe
in the solitude
which sharpens the mind
-or makes it err?

Did they hear a voice
unknown to us, experience a dream
granting awakening and certainty
firm as truth, as the word?

DID THEIR FINGERTIPS  count
the veins of the leaves
did they read the lines
in the palm of eternity?

Did their myopic eyes
dissolve the darkness
did they recognise the signs, the dawn
in the face of the night?

PEGASUS

Who broke the golden bridle
stole the horse?

Still there is water
at the well

but the hoofbeat dies away
without resounding.

GODDESS OF THE NIGHT

Threatening,
as a beastly being
hangs darkness above the earth

what moon
brings us a glimpse of light

what sun
-which does not threaten
gives us a sign?

WHERE IS the greater light
providing more lucidity

where is the seer, the prophet
who hands as bread the truth
pure, bright and profound

where is the guiding star
which lightens in the dark

where is the secret power
which draws from the stars
the timeless orbit
the cycle of the planets
?