Saturday, May 28, 2022

Either the Way of the Dao or the Way of the Dung

 

“So who, I ask you, would want

to seek out and leaf through so many

volumes and then extract so little?”

Boccaccio, Pagan Gods, Preface I

 

Many extract little

by extracting much

of what love may say

from behind the cover,

 

leafing and loafing

through a book of life

and forgetting

that neither in this

 

nor in music, in that

geometry of the sound,

nothing that is is random,

not even errors or kismet.

 

But no one can see

or attain the elixir,

destiny’s belle letters,

who, enslaved, spends

 

one’s life in putting down

and away the soul and ever

trying to kill the God inside

so that the good is vain

 

and so is love and life

and what is left—whether

little or much becomes

a Hell or many Hells of lies

 

where the Muck of the Ugly reigns

just as, in the East, they found

the Dao—while the rest keep

drowning in the chosen dung.

No comments:

Post a Comment