Credo

Page 129 of “The Red Book” by Carl Jung

Even in the smallest village
there was always someone who believed,

the one who watched while the town slept
and over the dark roofs, every night,

studied the vacuums spanned by desire
and called out to his star.

Time uncoiled itself like a dragon,
unraveling the long serpent of consequence,

its scales only visible
in the sparse treasured whims of starlight.

In those narrow passages, the risk
was all there was and all that mattered:

its teeth, the deep burning, those eyes
that will see everything eventually,

and watch us even now, who forget
in the nocturnal rounds, how its promises

boil over from the unmapped allies,
each compressed instant of the dawn’s cauldrons.