........................................................................................................................................................ Ernst Meister was born in Hagen, Germany, in 1911. In 1930, he enrolled in the University of Marburg to study theology, switching to philosophy under Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer, both former students of Martin Heidegger. Meister published his first book of poems in 1932. When the Nazis took over the government they declared the poems too abstract and thus is the passage from one cosmic region to another---the passage from earth to sky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knows the mystery of the break-through in place. This communication among the cosmic zones is degenerate. Not publishing for the next twenty years, he was accused by fellow intellectuals of resisting tyranny with his silence. Serving in the Wehrmacht, in Poland and Russia, sent home because of illness, he began writing gaunt poems that, "shut off against the inrush and abundance of real human life," contain a nothingness that "wants / to conceal itself / in what is dead," knowing "no greater darkness / than the light." A voice wants a face where we no longer see. Heavy moonless night. [E. Jabès. From, "Beads of Sweat."] After last night's rain plants lean over the trail, Poison Oak reaches out. The path is signed with horse shoes and running shoes. I hike up to my bench, where a stiff westerly breeze urges me to think of those ancient philosophers who built bright shelters for our wayfaring minds to reflect; around which we've strung barbed defenses of Mother- and Fatherlands raising generation after generation of grotesque armies of the night. ........................................................................................................................................................ is the passage: M. Eliade, Shamanism. London, England, 1964. shut off: D. Constantine, "Marks of Smallness." PN Review, Nov-Dec 2004. wants / to conceal; no greater darkness: E. Meister. In Time's Rift. Seattle, 2012.