08-13-2011, 01:28 PM
"Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon." - Aristotle, Eudemos
"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3
So this ceaseless going back.
The car broke down by the side of the road,
you walk on the hard shoulder in hopes
a house will soon appear,
a single light from one window,
like the light of the hospital room
you saw while exiting the womb.
We enter light. We enter dark.
The front door of the house. The back.
Walking in at morning prayers
and leaving at evensong.
All day we reflect on our first hours.
The butler showing us to seats,
then the offering of treats.
The mush, the milk, the bruised nipple,
the sustenance bestowed with love
then denied with tender hand
as we are left to forge our place,
continue the grand tradition of Life.
Moving through the endless halls,
destiny is grist for fools.
Look at the etchings on this door,
a thousand love poems, regrets,
the random bleatings of the pained,
the passionate mind still craving youth,
an innocence these leaves refute.
These leaves browning upon the porch,
proof that wane will each life's torch.
"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3
So this ceaseless going back.
The car broke down by the side of the road,
you walk on the hard shoulder in hopes
a house will soon appear,
a single light from one window,
like the light of the hospital room
you saw while exiting the womb.
We enter light. We enter dark.
The front door of the house. The back.
Walking in at morning prayers
and leaving at evensong.
All day we reflect on our first hours.
The butler showing us to seats,
then the offering of treats.
The mush, the milk, the bruised nipple,
the sustenance bestowed with love
then denied with tender hand
as we are left to forge our place,
continue the grand tradition of Life.
Moving through the endless halls,
destiny is grist for fools.
Look at the etchings on this door,
a thousand love poems, regrets,
the random bleatings of the pained,
the passionate mind still craving youth,
an innocence these leaves refute.
These leaves browning upon the porch,
proof that wane will each life's torch.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe