THE SUGARCANE LABYRINTH

The Labyrinth that Solomon built

When you hear of a labyrinth, stranger,
That Solomon molded from his intellect and built with stones set in an arc:
Copy it’s structure, shape and diversity
True to scale, using strokes of dark ink,
And, in so doing, observe the innumerable turns,
Namely the perfectly round paths that lead from the inside to the outside
And then curve in an arc back to the inside again,
And see it as the circular path of life,
Demonstrated by the slipperyness of the dangerous twists and turns,
(which emerge) from the rounded, circular bends;
for life’s path turns little by little –
like a dragon, with his evil wriggling movements-
seemingly creeping forward imperceptibly.
The Labyrinth has a crooked gate through which it is difficult to gain entrance:
As far as you have traveled, hurrying from the outside to the inside,
You will then have to travel through the narrow, winding, misleading paths
(from) the inside to the depths of the egress;
day by day it bewitches you with it’s paths to the outside,
and, mockingly, it plays its game with you
with the turns of (vain) hope,
like a dream with it’s blank faces,
intil Cronos, the prime mover, slowly vanishes
and, alas, that dark worker, Death, receives you,
who dashes your chances of ever reaching the egress.

Photo © Anne Senstad