Before Descartes

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.
From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.

----Wallace Stevens.

Like the reflection of the bridge in the torrent,
dance in the depth of affliction.
Keep your place firmly, yet dance,
separated from yourself.

Time has no loyalty; the single
moment is our treasure.
Dance in the loyal covenant from the beautiful ones.
Constant seeking is delight-why do you think
of getting over it?
Give up walking-dance at the sound of the caravan bell.

---Ghalib.

Goethe's thoughts:Urphanemon: the original-beyond which is the inanimate, the unthinkable and the speechless, where all understanding sinks below the surface,shut off from the light: it solidifies into a rigid abstract idea; beyond, in the other direction, it becomes mere sensation,contingency, appearance, 'senseless': a particular thing unrelated to either anything else in time or space or the universal. The whole phenomenal world seems and is at this balancing point, this fulcrum-neither pattern nor point, but both. Insofar as we too are a 'thing' amongst others-a perceiving thing- our position corresponds to theirs. We are destined to fade and soar as well. This blueness-is it sadness or joy?

Thus Simone Weil could say that we're at a level below which we'd be incapable of being loved by God and above which we'd be burned by the love of God...between zero and infinity. A step in the wrong direction and we'd be blinded. Not too close, nor too apart. Everything is this. Veiling and unveiling. Hiding and seeking.

Selections from Goethe's Diwan:

Life's such a wonder of contradiction,
Give thanks to God when he squeezes you so,
And thank him when he lets you go.
----

Wave upon wave flows, countless, infinite
Your lips ever poised to kiss,
Your soul outstreaming its sweet note
your loving heart outpoured, your throat
Thirsty for wine's deep mysteries.
----
Is its leaf one self-divided,
Forked into a shape of strife?
Or have the two of them decided
On a symbiotic life?
this I answer without trouble
And am qualified to know:
I am single, I am double,
And my poems tell you so.
---
Now may one hear it still from afar,
words reach their goal,
though sound and music fade.
Is it not still the tent of scattered stars
the high transfigured world that love has made?
---
And this one reminds me of a scene from Bergman's Seventh Seal..a late summer's evening under the northern skies, a final dazzling of the sun's light before the day is done, a cool breeze through the long grass, the deepening shadows...

And I'd dearly like my friends, both
Young and old up there to gather
All of us in German babbling
Paradisal words together
Yet in other dialects men and
angels make communication:
secret grammars, speech of roses
And the poppy's conjugation.
---
Carried by restless passion
till in visions of eternal
Love we vanish, fading , soaring.