Dedicated To Hesse's Goldmund Poem by Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)

The old master sat,
withering like winter’s flowers
as he shrank -
from encroaching onslaught of creeping death.
He had watched many shapes and faces, so held
shimmering vision on virile edge of his mind.
Afterwards thoughts never ceased to plague
in every shape, a certain form repetition of line.

I think matters not what one thought or speaks.
but what we shape with willing hands before time.
So from fetal dream began careful drawing
with loving fingers, clearer its shape defined.
To picture wondrous root of image making; grief transmuted -
seeking to formulate thoughts; the sharper to bind.

Envisaged image was a perfect whole
without flaw, symmetry
sprung from life, from sacrosanct depths,
he held it within his mind.
Then cast it forth like a radiant jewel
many faceted,
even in darkness,
in faintest light it will shine.