Smoke from This Altar (1990) by Louis L'amour Page B

the lonely anchor light
    And watch the sleeping city down the hay; The world about is faint and far away A thing of understanding more than sight, And with the dawn, like some enchanted rite, It rises from the mist to meet the day.
    The shades of night have set their sombre sail And fled before the crimson scythe of dawn; The stars go out, like candles in a gale
    And leave a scene some artist might have drawn, Of ships aflame and spires in golden mail That hesitates a moment and is gone.
    *

Smoke From This Altar (1990)

WORDS FROM A WANDERER
    I do not know your wooded slopes and streams But as the passing stranger knows the way The nets of
    dusk have trapped the ending day,
    When webs of shadow snare the filtered gleams; I only know how dim the pathway seems And how the dust from many roads of gray, Has sunk into my heart and made me pay With tears and loneliness for these few dreams.
    I do not know the way the hearth-light hums Nor how the kiss of childish lips may feel,
    I only know the way the mad sea churns
    And how the blowing spray, like hits of steel, Can tear like savage teeth, and rip from me, These last reluctant hopes, and leave me free.
    *
    TO CLEONE: IN BUDAPEST
    You were so sure your warmth and love would hold And you did not think of the trade wind's whine, Nor could you know the lands I'd known of old, Or that the paths you knew were never mine.
    You did not guess the curse of common things, Or that the bonds of love could ever chafe; You thought the eagle's firmly pinioned wings Were bound so very close that love was safe;
    And then one night when stars were soft and clear, Like harbor lights in some strange port of calling
    dropped my off-shore lines and harbor gear, And sailed away to sea and left it all.
    *
    I'M A STRANGER HERE
    If I, between two suns, should go away, No voice would lift to ask another why, No word would question my retreat, nor sigh, Nor wonder why I'd chosen not to stay; For I'm a stranger here, of other clay;
    A guest within this house, a passerby A roving life whose theme has been "Goodbye"
    A shadow on the road, a thing astray.
    What dim ancestral heritage is mine That now awakens in my blood regret?
    What destiny is this, what strange design, That I must seek a haunting silhouette In unremembered lands my dreams divine,
    But cannot quite recall nor quite forget?
    *

Smoke From This Altar (1990)

WITHOUT THIS LAND
    These tawny hills cannot be mine, for here Am I a stranger too, an alien thing Swept up by some uncertain tide, or blown By casual winds; these stubbled fields that lie So impotent beneath the autumn sun Gathering strength before the quickening urge Of spring will swell the soil with some
    New birth, and green will grow the cotton then, And corn-lands sun themselves to life anew Beneath familiar skies, but fields I know The moment only, then no more, for I Shall pass and sink no roots within this soil.
    The pasture here cannot be mine to feel Nor yet these dwarfish trees that twist above Whining their anguish to the winter wind. Not here am I to lean against a tree, Feeling the furrowed bark beneath my hand And knowing it and I were rooted deep In this same loam; not here am I to feel The soil is one with me, with this my flesh, This heart, this brain; not here am I at home Nor yet upon the sea where long slate swells And slowly heaves and rolls and flings itself Against the bulwarked rocks, to roll again And yet again with long repeated blows.
    Not here am I at home, for this quick flesh
    Is born of many seas and many roads Is one with dust and wind-blown spume, and leaves That fall and feed themselves to earth again.
    These things I know but as the passerby With many other things before, beyond This land, these hills, those ships and seas are all A part of me, my flesh is of that dust, That rain, that brine, that song is in my blood; The dust of many roads is now my flesh, And dust to dust returns, so this must strive Ever returning to the roads again, And I am rooted