I Came to This Life to Accord Both with the Sagalassos Missive And Lao Tze’s Teachings

“Men are born soft and supple;
Dead, they are stiff and hard. …
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
Is a disciple of death;
Whoever is soft and yielding
Is a disciple of life…
The soft and supple will prevail.”
—Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching, Book 76

Odine, Odette, Undine—
is that a way to transcend
the rigid, leaden corpse
where the light of self,

the good old Atman,
undergoes its darkening?
Not unlike a word in speech—
how did they name it in Urdu?—

when, infused with life,
it grows sinuous and svelte
till it arches to a supple song,
flowing like a mountain spring

ripe and rightly timed
for some restored nymphaeum
(like that above Ağlasun,
where nimble Maenads

ring a hero’s lofty tomb).
And isn’t mater Atman,
mirrored, inverse, dimmed—
a heart petrified within?

Or have we forgotten
that even to be inspired,
there, to begin, one must be
affable to love’s spirit first?