The Most Sacred Mountain
Space and the twelve clean winds of heaven,
And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand
feet of climbing!
This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy.
Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green;
and lower down the flat brown plain the floor of earth
stretches away to blue infinity.
Space, and the twelve clean winds are here;
And with them broods eternity--a swift, white peace, a presence
manifest.
But I shall go down from their airy space, this swift white peace,
this stinging exultation
And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm
of the daily round.
Yet, having known, life will not press so close and always I
shall feel time ravel thin about me;
For once I stood
In the white windy presence of eternity.
--Eunice Tietjens
The Home Book
of Modern Verse
From: Mother Earth: Through the Eyes of Women Photographers and Writers, Edited by Judith Boice, Random House, 1992.
If you should ever want to go to a place somewhere far beyond your daily experience, someplace exotic, steeped in history and mystery but likely unknown to anyone in your circle of friends or acquaintances and you are prepared to fly to Beijing, find a way to travel 300 miles further, past the little village of Qufu where Confucius lived; then you could reach Mount Tai. If Mount Tai has called to you, as it has called to pilgrims and travelers for thousands of years, then you would prepare yourself to climb the 7,200 steps that would take you through the South Gate to Heaven and you may feel as Eunice Tietjens had felt: "in the white windy presence of eternity." Eunice experienced this a hundred years ago, as an intrepid explorer; her words stir my soul today. In some small, but powerful way, poetry can transport us to these places of wonder and mystery that we can never reach in any other way. Add in amazing photography, and this book is a passport to astonishment.
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