I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out, would be another, and truer, way.

clean-washed sea

The flowers were.

These are examples of leaving out. But, forget as we will, something soon comes to stand in their place. Not the truth, perhaps, but—yourself It is you who made this, therefore you are true. But the truth has passed on

 

to divide all.

 

Have I awakened? Or is this sleep again? Another form of sleep? There is no profile in the massed days ahead. They are impersonal as mountains whose tops are hidden in cloud. The middle of the journey, before the sands are reversed: a place of ideal quiet.

 

You are my calm world. This is my happiness. To stand, to go forward into it. The cost is enormous. Too much for one life.

 

There are some old photographs which show the event. It makes sense to stand there, passing. The people who are there—few, against this side of the air. They made a sign, were making a sign. Turning on yourself as a leaf, you miss the third and last chance. They don’t suffer the way people do. True. But it is your last chance, this time, the last chance to escape the ball

 

of contradictions, that is heavier than gravity bringing all down to the level. And nothing be undone.

 

The memory of a stain, enacting the statute. It is the law to think now. To think becomes the law, the dream of young and old alike moving together where the dark masses grow confused. We must drink the confusion, sample that other, concerted, dark effort that pushes not to the light, but toward a draft of dank, clammy air. We have broken through into the meaning of the tomb. But the act is still proposed, before us,

 

it needs pronouncing. To formulate oneself around this hollow, empty sphere... To be your breath as it is taken in and shoved out. Then, quietly, it would be as objects placed along the top of a wall: a battery jar, a rusted pulley, shapeless wooden boxes, an open can of axle grease, two lengths of pipe... We see this moment from outside as within. There is no need to offer proof. It’s funny... The cold, external factors are inside us at last, growing in us for our improvement, asking nothing, not even a commemorative thought. An what about what was there before?

 

This is shaped in the new merging, like ancestral smiles, common memories, remembering just how the light stood on the water that time. But it is also something new. Outside, can’t you hear it, the traffic, the trees, everything getting nearer. To end up with, inside each other, moving upward like penance. For the continual pilgrimage has not stopped. It is only that you are both moving at the same rate of speed and cannot apprehend the motion. Which carries you beyond, alarmingly fast out into the confusion where the river pours into the sea. That place that seems even farther from shore...

 

There is nothing to be done, you must grow up, the outer rhythm more and more accelerate, past the ideal rhythm of the spheres that seemed to dictate you, that seemed the establishment of your seed and the conditions of its growing, upward, someday into leaves and fruition and final sap. For it is to be transcended... The pace is softening now, we can see why it had to be. Our older relatives told of this. It happened a long time ago