HADRIAN, TO A LIKENESS, HIDDEN

To Thrace I have come,
not on account of Rome.
To Thrace I have come,
not on account of Latin festivals.
To Thrace I have come,
not on account of pompous expanses.
To Thrace I have come
for something quivering, inviting,
that has never existed in the senses and in reason before.
To Thrace I have come
On account of one wild spring.
I thought perhaps the one I seek
is still here,
the one similar to me,
the one I have postponed for too long
as just before death when the rings are removed in a manner
                                                                 slow and solemn    
or when with royal deliberation earthly vestments
                                                           are set aside.

And thus searching for another nature
from a form far off, from a form with height, from a form with
warmth
to merge with me,
I have found the wilderness and its heart -
tribes, fire, rites unknown to the eye, ancient sacrifices.

I am Roman. I, too, know sacrifice - visible.
But this other, the one I seek
is waiting for me beyond the spheres, the universe and the gods known to me,
is waiting for this Thracian spring to burn my last carnal desire,
is waiting until the last garment of my old reason is scattered as ashes,
is waiting for me to be pure enough,
to receive an infinite, invisible nature through His eyes
and the cells of a system exhausted in visibility
to pass on to millions of butterflies
and then to flow into a sea younger than time.