Long have I, like many others I have heard, sought the key

to unlock the door to enter in upon the path of life.

Once, I spoke with another who also sought the answer

in overcoming her very own wickedness in vice,

which indeed resided within her own heart and mind–

though the truth she sought, to it alone she was clearly blind.

For in her soul and in her body, in her hands and in her feet

resided all that which she should ever want or truly need:

I am the key and I am the door into which the key that I am fits;

I am the feet and I am the path upon which the feet that I am walk.

Virtue and vice meet within me, wherein my soul’s center sits,

and that which is within me is whereat the key will fit the lock.

I resurrect each day as the sun anew and I set each night, till the moon

should awaken in the shadows, to which the dark of night might croon.

Great Creator though I am not, I am the maker of my own destiny,

for I create even as the Creator what I live and who I come to be

by what I say and think and do, yes, by my deeds and my own actions;

it is I who make myself, who determines whether or not I become

a being of goodness or of wretchedness, whether I live in what is right,

which uplifts my soul to become itself completely in full-fledged flight.