Cavern: 'To the Queen's Chamber' Poem, Green Tortoise, Harbin "Walk In" Pass

I found a poem which a French friend and I wrote at Carlsbad Caverns on a Green Tortoise trip in around 1995.


To the Queen's Chamber

We walked down, down into the earth.
The hole invited us, the dark surrounded us.
Hush.

C'est alors que le monde obscur que l'on croit endormi
s'est éveillé peu à peu sous nos pas.

{Then this dark world, seemingly asleep,
little by little woke up under our steps}.

Vast ceilings, moist world,
haunted, enchanted,
stalactite invite, stalagmite unite,
top and bottom merge
in the space underground.

Le silence n'est pas silence
son cristallin des gouttes d'eau
la roche millénaire respire ou pleure doucement.

{Silence is not silence
The crystallized sound of dripping water,
which stokes ancient breath,
or perhaps they cry softly}.

This cave, a sponge, collapsing from the inside
to create space, and silence, which sings internally,
absorbs water, makes shapes, lives, breathes.

We walked down into the living, breathing earth
and saw beauty.

We drank it in.



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And I also found today a Harbin Hot Springs holistic retreat pass, from 1995, which I've scanned and posted here:







To the Harbin pools again . . .

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(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2008/12/poem-green-tortoise-pass.html - December 26, 2008)