They speak of freedom—but freedom itself
in them is mute. And what do they know
of Rome and the Vatican, since they dress
Lady Liberty in a Roman matron’s gown?
And to whom does such a stern goddess—
an immortal feminine archetype—
meeting her pilgrim at the port,
as Bendis once did Socrates—
pass the twin light of her flaming torch,
if she be no abysmal Gorgon—
one who not only turns her men to swine,
but dissolves them into a loveless void?
Into that void of fatal soullessness
that casts the good and the beautiful
as a recessive dream—
a void that engulfs what one is
or was in ravenous extinction?
And in that gaping hollow, its hostages
are given over to infectious ugliness
that dubs nigredo its elixir and gold,
locking out the ailing rays of truth.
Unless one chooses to resist—
by mastering first the ancient art
of sitting quietly; for thus one learns
how to gather who one is—
and so unlearn not to resist,
nor be swept away by the motions
of the time’s unrelenting windmills
that lift—only to cast their prey
back into the world, coiled in their tail,
where love that once cleared the base
has somehow been forgotten—
though its scent still lingers
in the air like a rose’s breath
from a garden long since gone.
So perhaps an old Sufi saying
may yet offer a slender consolation:
“At every point there are two ways—
the way of strength and the way of weakness.”
And this is the geometry we find on Earth—
though to choose otherwise than the many
marks one an outcast, a pariah,
one who offends against “the holy.”
Yet the soul is the path of all paths,
the song of all songs, and love
of all loves—the golden thread,
the only one leading from the labyrinth,
unknotting all nights and knots,
yet binding the two of us in a filament,
in a great lacing that crisscrosses
lives and deaths.
But how many souls, and how many loves,
would choose that long, beautiful path—
beholden to measure as revelation
in the adoration of the soul’s fresh divine bloom?
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