{ Edward Hirsch: Isis Unveiled. }

[delga]

Isis Unveiled
by Edward Hirsch

                    LONDON, 1977

The Indian café and the occult bookstore
that had been forgotten by time,
which is immaterial, are gone,

and so are the endless rainy afternoons
when I sat reading—or trying to read—
the mystical tracts of the Golden Dawn

that so inspired Yeats and Maud Gonne,
while a cranky one-armed waiter
played chess by himself in the corner.

I sipped steaming cups of spiced tea
and despaired over the leaden prose
of a system I couldn't crack,

Isis hidden behind too many veils
and Reality fogged like the city itself.
Even the windows seemed Rosicrucian.

Outside, the side streets were crooked
fingers, indexes pointing nowhere,
tucked in sleeves, dead-ends.

The Indian café and the occult bookstore
and the dreamy skeptic I was
are inside me still, and so is the night

I carried my books through a labyrinth
of mysterious buildings, obscure signs,
and ended up on the edge of a vast park

where the sky suddenly brightened
overhead, a west wind lifted
the wet leaves from the wet ground

and trees shimmered in the distance
like the airy shades of women
dancing in black slips.