We’ve been bewitched by countless lies, <br />by azure images of ice, <br />by false promises of open sky and sea, <br />and rescued by a God we don’t believe. <br />Like coppers rattling from a beggar’s plate <br />guiding lights have fallen on our days <br />and burned and died. <br />We’ve pressed our ship <br />a pilgrimage of nights toward such lights <br />as, always elusive, lured and tricked <br />the keel upon the rocks and ripped <br />the helmhold from the hand and lashed <br />the beggared palm to scraps. <br />Ice tightens at the bow and breath. <br />To dock, to dropp the anchor to its rest, <br />to drift (a dream!) on waters quieted <br />and calmed. We can’t. We’re after a mirage. <br />(The whiskered walrus brays; the sea salt thaws. <br />Again, we’re off!) <br />Raised on powdered milk, we’ll have no faith <br />in beacons any longer, nor mistake <br />real for fake, or waking for a dream. <br />Beacons can’t be trusted. Trust instead <br />the will of your own hand and head. <br />Again the captain waves his glass, <br />sights a beacon, turns and cries <br />'Helmsman! There’s a beacon. Are you blind? ' <br />But Helmsman, with the truer eye <br />thinks mutiny and grumbles, <br /> 'A mirage.'<br /><br />Yevgeny Yevtushenko<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ballad-about-false-beacons/
