"Rasur" or "The Week of Splendor" (Part 1)

[Pushkara Sally Ashford]

Costa Rica disbanded its army in 1949, just a few years after the poem "Rasur or "Week of Splendor" was written in Spanish by Roberto Brenes Mesén. This prophetic poem, translated to English, tells the story of a master teacher, Rasur, who enters a mountain village and awakens the children to the ways of peace. The children's relationship with Rasur, opens the way to peace among all of the villagers. The poem became the basis of a proven, skills-based method for peacemaking now taught in the public schools and at the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica.

http://rasurinternational.org/documents/poem.pdf

I
Facing the town of Escazu,

among the emerald hills, hidden,

we found the village of Quizur.

Something really strange has happened

in this humble village:

from each crack of the old walls

rays of the purest gold are glowing,

the wind goes back and forth

joyful in the golden light

of the most exhilarating and bluest sky,

moistening our eyes with the sweetest

nectars.

As if enchanted, the mountain sings

with its crystal voice,

with the help of the tumbling waters

that come downhill, twittering along.

There is a melodious rumor,

so distant, so sweet,

just like a breeze 

playing

with the flutes in the fronds,

over the valleys and the hills.

II

The children from this village,

and the children from vacationing families,

they have all met here, this morning,

and they have gotten lost,

beyond the deepest valleys, in the hills

bathed with splendor and turquoise lights.

Julian, the painter.

David, the mystic writer of tales,

and Servulus, too.

They have all parted.

They followed the paths which end

by the banks of the river.

Damian, the engineer.

Armando, the town’s judge.

Benjamin, the ox­ driver.

They all followed the paths through the woods,

heading for the hills.

Spread throughout the forest,

women call out the children by their names.

Only the leaves, like tongues, rustling on the trees,

answer their calls with slow and deep voices,

as if a chorus of echoes

repeated their cries at a distance.

The forest is no solitary place,

it is the divine mansion of magic deities,

who are always busy preparing

the magic brews, the fragrances,

the subtle virtues of the herbs,

the many tastes and syrups made with fruits.

Then they give them to the birds,

to men, and to themselves;

Thus they live surrounded by honey and perfumes.

But this morning the dryads' voices

are louder than the wind's:

you can almost see their white voices

entangled with the vines,

like climbing tresses aiming at the peaks.

Damian now presses on his march,

he calls his friends' attention.

Then they hear a chorus of children.

The children they are searching,

the children they cannot see...

The voices drift through the darkest pines.
The ox­ driver is restless.
He has never heard of
either cave or grotto large enough to hold so many children.
The Justice reassures him, then:
"If they are singing, they are well.

Magical shepherds guard over the flocks of children on this earth,

since they are the flowers of eternal beauty,
the flowers of truth and goodness."

Damian noticed a little hut uphill and he headed towards it.

Benjamin could not recall that hut but then, as they got nearer,
the three men felt the strongest magnetic force which held them to the ground,
as if with many intangible chains.
They could not move.
They looked at each other in astonishment.
The three of them, transfigured,
without really understanding, apprehended and grasped the truth:
they were stepping into a forbidden circle.

At a distance, next to the hut,
they were able to see a reposing silhouette,
as if carved from light itself:
The same light which was now
spreading upon the forest.
It seemed to come from inside the mountain.
They felt a sensation of not belonging to the world;

their most subtle sensations floated to the surface
A world of visions and enchantment came alive.

Coming from underground
the children's voices were flying like birds and they were singing songs
of the bluish dawn breaking in the forest.
All the villagers were running to the mountains,
their souls were exalted.
But none of them could cross
the line separating that world of mystery,

from this other world of things,
that is unable to express,
like us,
their deepest feelings.

The tongues of the leaves became silent once more.
Only Silence itself with its mossy feet, was stepping over the forest floor back and forth,
but leaving everything in perfect neatness,
as if the forest was an altar.
The radiant figure in front of the hut, suddenly interrupted its rest:
and then a point of light seemed to move:

The hamadryads rose to their lips,
the horns that were hidden in the vines,

and the music of the wind spread all over;

Wise and witty was their melody,
full of youth and human kindness.
Absorbed, as if entranced,
the visitors heard inside their minds,
a revelation of intimacies,
secrets known only to themselves.
It was an invitation to invade
each chamber of remembrances.
It was a call to consciousness itself
in order to evoke the images of dreams, in order to judge reality
while lying among the leaves and the vines.
But, since time is the creation of men, nobody knew for how long
this enchantment flowed from their own souls.
Suddenly they were awakened
by the repeated singing
from Dryads and children
throughout the enchanted woods.

It was for the first time
the villagers had ever felt inside their minds
the discovery of a totally unexpected, interior kingdom of light and ideas,
Their first primal thought blossomed that day.
Damian and the Judge were calling out to the children.
Nonetheless, their calls were only raindrops
over the darkened hair of the stormy night.
The flocks of children seemed
to get together and then to separate:
they seemed more obedient to an unknown call
than to their own wills.

Then the villagers began to recognize the only word

which was coming out of the children's row:

“Rasur! Rasur! Rasur!”

III
Evening,
wearing her robe of most splendid blue,

lies over the hills and is observed from the village:
David and Julian, Damian and Armando, they are talking,
it is more a soliloquy than a conversation.

They feel their souls as if they were vases bursting with clear water;
they would express their feelings
in one single, soft outburst of their breasts,
as water being emptied into the earthen container at the well.

Then David says:
"Today you cannot complain
that my tales are pure fantasy;
your eyes have observed,
your hearts have responded
to the calls of vision and have felt
the illusion and the rapture."
Even Benjamin, the ox­ driver,
was transformed, and so he said:
"The words coming from Rasur
are fireflies shining in the dark,

enlightening my mind as never seen before;
I do not understand what is happening inside me:

I am another Benjamin
and for the first time I am discovering within myself another Benjamin,
more powerful and real then the other one,
who was a mere illusion.”

"Around Rasur," states Julian,
"the light seems whiter, the air purer,
his eyes seem to read from the deepest waters,
the ground, the light, the air;
and his gestures and his words surround you in mystery
and go deep into your thoughts.
He provokes a feeling
of being initiated into the occult,
as David used to tell us
when he read the Iambic and the Proclus.

Rasur is a source of miracles and a miracle:
The effects of his acts go far beyond
the expectations of the artist or the mechanic.”

Then Julian extracted green gemstones
from his pocket,
and showed them to his friends,
"These are the work of Rasur,
Myria, my daughter, told me,
as she has learned from Rasur
in the grotto,

when his figure glowed with a light

coming from inside his body

which has cleared the darkness there,

in the enchanted cave:”

She said to me:
"The luster of the green leaves
was made of earth and sun,
is made of air, of water and life,
is made with the air's life,
with the water's life,
is made of earth, sun and fire,
because everything in this world
comes from the divine mind,
and it is the essence of the world's life.

Our own hands may heal,
because they possess the healing powers found in the roots of plants:
they may heal, they may poison,
they may kill, and alleviate,
and soothe and provide exaltation,
they may turn the ground into
brilliant luster, shining in the sun.
Look at the tree: it changes
the dark matter in the soil
into shining green leaves, and yet
you do not consider the tree
to be a miracle.
I do as the tree does:
I provide a certain glow to the pebble that tomorrow shall be dust or soil.
The Dryads who taught its tasks to the tree,
taught me as well, and they shall teach you, too,
if you should obey their Call."

Then Armando exclaimed:
"I sense a bit of paganism
in what Myria has just told us,
and also in what I hear from Grisda. Rasur has told them
the immortals never forget whom they have loved:
If we creatures of the flesh do forget our love
then it was never a true love:
they called love what was desire,
that vanishes into thin air
after it reaches the object of its lust. True love is born within the soul,

in  the divine mind,
and it is the essence of the world's life.

it travels with the soul as its companion,

and it searches for the beloved beauty and finds it, at last, next to itself,
within the soul."
Grisda, my daughter, has affirmed this with such certitude,
that my own son Florio, smiling, incredulous
has asked her: "Then, who is Rasur?"

"Who he is I do not know,"
she answered, “But when I look at him, adoration is what I feel.
In his presence my ideas
struggle in turmoil,
and I am a goddess,
hovering over the ground

When I find myself in Rasur's World,

my life is like the lark in the fields,

soaring from the earth up into the sky, at daybreak.
We youngsters all become older,
and good and so beautiful,
we believe ourselves to be angels.
When Rasur speaks to us
and tells us that we are all imprisoned gods,
not one of us is coveting a doubt.
Rasur penetrates into our thoughts,
as if they were halls of his own home; we do what he wishes,
we feel happy to do what is pleasing us.

Next to Rasur we live not in obedience as he does not command us,

because his will is ours."

Florio was mocking no more. Then, he asked me:

"What is your opinion of all this? Julian, I await your answer."
"I cannot answer you, for the time being, because brilliant sparks
are lighting in my mind,
and answers you shall see
in my paintings, in my landscapes.
Today I have learned to paint;
I shall paint as never before.
Today I learned that light itself
is the container of the very essence of Divinity,
that it creates reality and illusion in this world.
Out of Nature's imagination
come flowing the forms, the colors, the ideas conceived and expressed

in light, in lines, in the shapes:
they all come out in the form of satyrs,

they all hide in themselves the divinity,

they provide the world with sense and beauty.
Without their divine core,
like drawings in the breeze they would be..."

At that very moment, a beautiful girlish voice was heard,
it came from the garden across the path,

and the girl was leading a bunch of village children.
None in the group of friends could recognize the girl;
they had never seen her before, but delighted,
they listened to her clear voice explain:
"In the presence of Rasur, our minds are set on fire,

the ideas turn to amber. When he leaves all remains as glowing coals
under a veil of ashes.
In silence he talks to us,
in silence we see his mind and his love.

You already know how he reaches
our deepest thoughts,
as he enters our souls
as you enter the aisles of a church
as you go along through the paths in the meadows.

In the presence of Rasur,
all is beauty, all is ease;
our fingers turn into ten little fairies,

creating shapes and colors around them,

giving life to them with their touch.
Flowing from his eyes,
is medicine and magic:
a powerful evocation
calling up a swarm of memories, a turmoil of impressions
which used to dwell in limbo, where things left no trace,
if they ever were things.
We are empty caves through which He runs carelessly,
and we cannot help it:
we are His;
as the mango seed is to its fruit,
as the wing is to the bird.
He just taught us last night
that deep in the soul of the Earth

Paradise Lost becomes eternal reality;
that we may reach that Eden
by following the paths which extend throughout our own selves.

We know the guardians
in the mountains of Quizur,
from the Miner's Stone
to the lower slopes
which end just in front
of the church in Escazú.
We shall never be alone,
in the hills and forests
of these magic mountains.
The guardian rangers of these woods are all friends of Rasur's;
they have also become our friends. Their bright shapes intertwine
with the many other shapes at twilight. No one will deem them real beings.
But you know reality is not what it appears to be.

Yesterday Rasur called to us:
"I create as the tree does,
from the darkened earth I start,

leaves and flowers begin to grow,

and the delightful fruits as well.

From what you call darkness precious gems I make:
gilded stones glowing under the light of the cave.
Once a silkworm a loom
from the lilies stole:
But, I do not need to steal a loom
to render thoughts
where I knit the finest cloth;
where I paint the landscapes
and create the earth, the skies,
the souls of those who worship me,

and even the souls of gods I sometimes visit,
bidding you farewell and leaving...

Surya, the twelve­-year­-old sorcerer, interrupted that moment,
and with the voice of an exalted Muse exclaimed:
"I am perceiving the call of Rasur. Look at the top of the hills!
The Guardians have lit the little hut; the entrance to the grotto!”
Suddenly, springs and waterfalls of joy
came down the hills.
All the children of Quizur began to climb,

and chanted:
Rasur! Rasur! Rasur!
The call was expanding through the dales,
as trumpets sounded played by the Dryads,
hidden in the wind.
Each one heard his own name distinctly pronounced in the wind:

It was that loving voice!
The voice they had heard that very morning in the cave!

IV
"Something great is happening,
in the village of Quizur,"
Said Julian to his friends,
and to the many neighbors
who came to express their
feelings and their concerns.
"Be happy", he reassured them,
"Joy is coming down the hills,
joy from an Enchanted Child."
"I have been thinking

that like Rasur,

there was also Krishna, the Worshiped Child of India.
Krishna, like Rasur did,
has called upon the children,
to fill their minds with images of things to come.
The gods go deep into the spirit of men,

to find a place where divine will may grow
and flourish in the world of the future.

It is through Man that deities create the Universe.
It is in each of you that I discover a golden thread
among the ordinary colorless threads in the fabric of life.
Look: the twilight seems like a broken wire frame
where beautiful rags hang, illuminated with strange lights,
an eerie luminescence now mixed
with our everyday sunlight,
an unknown clarity coming from the deity our children call Rasur.
You already know

that gods sometimes appear to us dressed in the poorest rags,

like the fairies do to meet you on the road.
Sometimes they also turn into a beautiful child
and leave men awestruck.
Saint Augustine, one day,
looking across the Mediterranean Sea,

exerted all his efforts in order to comprehend
the infinite power of God and His infinite wisdom.
Suddenly there appeared a child,

and with a seashell he carried ocean water
to a little well he had dug in the sand.

Slowly, he went on with his duty.
The Saint came to him and asked
what was he doing.

“Inside this little well I want to pour the ocean,”
he replied.
“Impossible that is”, the Saint replied.
“I am doing just as you have done,” said the child,
“I am pouring an infinite amount of water within the limits of a hole;
just as you try to enclose God
inside your mind.”

Look at the hills again!
The little hut at the top is shining,
as brilliant as a crystal reflecting fire.

The luminous shape walks around the hut
like a protecting deity: our children are safe!"

V
Julian is painting;
through his improvised workshop's window
one can see the mountain,
now called the Mountain of Rasur. Julian's palette was like a garden
where one could only see
the wild colors of the tropical forest.
The artist looked at the landscape
and then he painted,
as if he did not have a canvas before him.

He used his brushes as if they were needles,
he embroidered the contours of his drawings:
the little hut, the shining guardian,
the mountain itself,
all bathed in amber light.
Each new stroke on the canvas seemed to add
a torrent of fresh light.
One could almost see the landscape coming through the window,
as the spiritual vision of the horizon,

adhering itself to the artist's brush,

getting colors and infiltrating the artist's mind and eyes.
Each individual line of the painting seemed to attain
an extra-sensorial conception:
each stroke looked forward to the next, holding each other like sisters.
This exhilarating race with the brush was the artist’s delight at every hour,

each color incarnated a new experience of spiritual intimacy,
an image, an emotion,
all of them surging

from the unknown abodes of his inner self, until that day.
Everything was then revealed to him,

as if he were looking in the mirror of nature,
at that place where images are born for the happy reality of living things.

He painted as in ecstasy, a dream of many things,
trees, hills, the little hut, the wandering clouds
under the splendid morning sky.
When he removed the brush, after that last stroke,
the canvas seemed to him

the masterwork of another,
something like the expression of ideas

which are always found around the hills,

as if they were the winged fragments of divine truths,

perceived from the heights,
at that long­awaited hour when the deities
favor us with their divine wisdom and sweet inspiration.
Even more astonished was the artist

after looking at the wild dances of lines and colors,

since it was the same as the rhythm which was bursting in his soul
and slowly flowed to the painter's brush!
Voices heard at a distance disrupted the enchanted moment.

The painter took off his apron,
he stored the inks, the brushes and palette.
An hour of creation was gone now,

it was now in the limbo of things­that­were,
but then... who knows?

VI
The farmers,
the villagers
who live in Quizur,
facing Escazú,
are standing speechless
since they cannot express
their feelings
about what happens
on the fields,
and on the roads
and paths
around Quizur.
Their children repeat
one name only:
Rasur! Rasur!
They never stop praising
the wonders he performs;
they tell how he draws
in mid-air,
how the beautiful shape remains and glows,
like the flight of fireflies,
and refuses to disappear.
He polishes the pebbles
that the children bring him
in their pockets,
and they sparkle
like precious jewels
at an elegant store.
A girl called Denya brought him a badly wounded bird:
With a movement of his hands and with his breath
he healed it.
A boy called Flip tells us
how Rasur answers their questions without words,
as he always knows their thoughts, and their nightly dreams.
He slips into
their most intimate secrets.
Nothing is hidden from Rasur:
They have become transparent,
like the air and the crystal,
and he speaks to them at a distance, without using his speech,
and proudly they obey him,
but nobody notices
his soft commands.

And nothing do they know
about this Child,
who descended from the mountains,

who became the Lord of the Valley.

Yet they all adore him,
for the magic of his being,
for the beauty of his face
and the fire in his hands,
always modeling, always drawing, shaping what he wishes,
following a certain image created by his fantasy.
Nothing sleeps in his presence,

neither the children nor the flowers,

not even the sleep­-inducing mimosa dares to close its petals and slumber,

when in front of Rasur's eyes.
The rumors of the Earth
are climbing up the trees,
and they tell Rasur the news
of its magical world of music,
with special words of remembrance,

mysterious remembrances,
from other lives in other lands.
In the darkness of the evening
they have seen him,
wandering through the hidden paths, returning to the earth,
by unknown mysterious ways.
There, in the deepest caves,
the gnomes have carved
a hall of stone for him.
So they say, Ania and Myria.
Out of every corner in the hall,
ancient voices from the past speak to him:

They remind him of the many ideas,
of the many plans and intentions
that were in his mind
once he had decided to come down
to the village of Quizur.
There his imagination
is renewed,
full of power
it evokes a river of images, of things­to­come,
and things­that­were.
Of eternal light is
his mind flooded,
and from the highest peaks he calls.
To the Hall of Being they come:

those who were happy and great:

the Supermen of the Spirit,
from every corner of this world,

they gather in merry assembly.

What Surya has understood, ­she is only twelve­-years­-old,­

is all wonder for the engineer,
for the artist, for the ox­ driver,
and it astonishes the analytic mind of that honest judge, Armando.
She then explains that Rasur and other Great Beings,
that met on the highest peaks,

are masters of the natural forces that the wise men call the laws,

of those forces

generating every single thing
in the Kingdom of Life.
They are all the Inspirers,
not the Makers:
there are other invisible intelligences

which are forces always designing and shaping
those atomic substances that conform everything existing on the Earth.

Their creative will
is the Supreme Will,
coming from the Brings
who harmonize their wishes to create supra­-sensible models,
on the basis of eternal archetypes,
of a long­-gone evolution.
In the Hall, Rasur is sitting, remembering
he is a child no more,
that his present form is just a segment

of the celestial circle which is of his Real Being,
just like we are.
We are like the fingers on his hands,

and provide a shape
to inspirations coming from his mind.

He teaches us how to create,
as he puts in ours a phosphorescent spark,
which slowly kindles our creative imagination.
He makes us understand the rumors among the trees,
the many sounds of the haunted, wild night,
the voices of hunting beasts.
Those sounds are just the voices of new creations,
from the essences and substances in the sap
that the smallest creatures on earth make,
even those in the depths of the soil.

Those forest sounds are the thoughts of the gods of Nature

that the ancient Greeks called Pan;
and who started the renewal of the world.

For all the forms in Nature there is an Autumn
but the voices of god Pan
bring Spring for them again.
Each morning he sheds light over the newborn forms
which were conceived the night before.

So the presence of Rasur in these beautiful hills
has brought us the vision of mysterious things
which cannot be observed with the eyes of humans.
All Nature is alive before us,
full of sensibility and a mighty intelligence.
Now we understand about the swarms of tiny creatures,
which destroy, build and renew the world,

as a myriad of little hands working forever
only to create the infinite charm of Nature.

VII
To Julian's house
Damian came.
A group of friends is admiring the artist's landscapes. Armando, the judge,
is expressing his feelings: "Everything comes alive on these canvases:
joyful light
runs and jumps
up and down the hills,
from the top
to the river banks;
the frothy waters of the streams, they give me this impression
of slow waters,
like a reflecting lens
that explodes
in a thousand emerald lights,
as if they had inside themselves the hidden enchantment
of this countryside
at this time of the day.
My senses are strained, awaiting a great surprise; tasting a miracle
about to happen.
The paintings around me seem to share
this most intimate anguish.
The beauty of your paintings
still remains in the hands of our Creator. They receive inspiration from the Highest,
murmur of a spring,
flowing among your rocks
and your grass, your trees,
and your water and mountains,
your colors contain the wondrous sap, that comes from a glance of fire
and from the many things that breath and palpitate in the lights
or in shadows of a sunset
yearning for the night.
The sky you paint is animated, with clouds and birds
crossing slowly
as if they were thoughts, traveling towards
a distant horizon of mystery,

The air in your paintings
seems bathed in the purest waters,
it looks blue in the foreground,
dark and golden in the mountains far away.

All that is found in Surya's narration,

inside the strange paintings I can see.

Even when it rains across the valley, you will find sunshine where we meet.

I believe that now I am grasping
what has happened inside your heart.”

Then David ­that silversmith, that mystic­
spoke and said:
"He who knows only one truth,
is stuck like an anchored ship with no sails.
You have lived with an anchor until that day
when the presence of Rasur
broke the chains sustaining your anchors.

Now your world is slowly beginning to spin in the other direction:
towards a different path.
The science you know is like a curtain, and it has been ripped apart,
and now you can see the real causes of things;
beyond the mere forms of things.
The Joy of Life is now entering the concentric spheres

of your six senses.

The Wonder of Life is changing you; because, until now,
you did not feel like you had lived.
Your science is now a beautiful dead object
if it insists in extracting the content from the form,
and if still studies things separated from their spirits.
The beauty you see in these paintings

lives forever in the eternity of firmament.

Anything that is eternal
is the soul of a single instant
as the infinite is the soul of a single atom."

Silence covered them
as a white fan spreading
under the light of thinking minds. The workshop's little window enlarged as a stage
showing a new spiritual horizon over the face of the earth.

So delightful was the pleasure they all felt

that the dream­like enchantment seemed to have no end.

Damian was more of a matter­of­fact young man,

and here he is in the presence of something he has been seeing and feeling
these last four days.
And thus he spoke:
"As shown in Julian's paintings,
from the valley I have seen the glow
of the little straw hut,
near the top of the hill
and I have seen flocks of children entering the hut.
I have heard the strangest narrations, about the caves and caverns of Rasur;

lthough I do not know if what they say
is the truth or a mere creation
of their mind's fantasies.
But, nevertheless, I join them
in their happiness,
scattered over the hill and dale,
along every road and path,
near the valleys' inns and shelters,
as if Springtime were offering them a blue carpet
to enter the mansions of Nature.
Spring seems to laugh with them
in the blue and purple colors
of the wild flowers,
in the little songs of birds
or in the slow everlasting chanting of the stream.
A Holy Gospel of Beauty and Joy
seems to spread under the light of these surroundings:
I have never seen before the like of it. Julian's paintings have revealed this ecstasy,
and have the happiness that he felt

as did the children and people from the village."
“While I was painting”, Julian, the artist, said “Nature herself was nurturing me with dreams.

Hers is the beauty appearing in the dreams of trees,
of grass and weeds,
of hills and rocky peaks

we find in these surroundings.
Because all these things are alive
and they always dream about beauty.

The forest is always aware of its life and of its dreams.
And the waters in the streams
are also dreaming as they flow.
The clouds of purest white
descending from the slopes,
are roaming these valleys,
and dreaming as they float,
over the long valleys,
from Grecia to Escazú,
and from there to Santa Ana.
They drift on,
like a flock of sheep in the distance;
they fly over the fields and the plains and disappear into the blue sky,
as long forgotten strands of the fairest hair.
Such is Nature:
She creates as she dreams on;
Like any other artist she dreams of her creations
before providing them with a shape,
in her womb of clay.
Likewise, I have always lived dreaming, happily,
the dream of Nature that lives in my paintbrush,
on the canvas, on my paintings;
it grows and leads,
as the tendrils of the vine look forward to the hold.
My astonishment is like yours:
Never before did I paint
with such joyful feelings,
never with such easiness,
and with such delight. Art,
when not born of inspiration,
is just an artist and an easel.
The joyful artist feels a flow of creation within himself,
just as the playful stream
carves shapes inside the caves.
Ever since Rasur
has been living among us,
this countryside seems full
of images of fire,
they go off and on like fireflies do, flying between the reeds
and the jagged edges of the leaves;

Images all around are flying,

willing to live forever
they flow upwards as a fountain,

born from Nature's imagination, running to find a place
in man's creative spirit:
they yearn to be fixed
in words or in a brush of light
in the blue air of my paintings:
I wanted men to feel what is not apparent.
I wanted to share what I now perceive in this ecstasy infused by Rasur.

Joy is like a spring of water that overflows
and runs over the fields,
as in that region of Umbria
where Francis of Assisi roamed, always singing:
"There is no valley of tears
in this Holy Land of Umbria."
All creatures living in these dales,
now feel like living under a new grace: when they stop to pick up a thistle
when they walk arm in arm
or just rest under a tree.
Men's voices are clearer and stronger,

they sound like the rushes at the river,

those manly voices from the country lads.
Silver and crystals may be found in the shining voices
of women and children,
so happy they seem to be
since they are company to the adolescent god,

since the day they learned to love Rasur.
Now that we live in Rasur's presence we share remembrances of people,
we recognize landscapes
which are not from these places of ours.

He mixes our lives with those
from other people,
other civilizations.
I have found myself
painting about exotic places, strange dances and processions,

which I had never seen before.
They are so real in my hands
and I am overwhelmed with wonder:

It is like living
in a garden of dreams,
this glorious place of Quizur,
with all its children, all its people.

Part of Rasur's enchantment it is all. 

This is why we love this adolescent god, Rasur...