Sub specie aeternitatis—
Is this really an actual thing?
A perspective from the standpoint
of eternity, the unblinking view
of a static eye beyond the beyond,
a comprehensive vision seeing everything?
Fallen into the arrogant blind
she aspires to this,
but cannot see;
instead is seen, the object in
the angle of an unmoved mover,
nothing more than thing.
She cannot see the all, of course,
but by the warming of imagination
conceives herself, the thing as is,
muttering a landscape into view
with words—and only words—
performing the necessary magic.
What she says, is; and what she says
is ‘I suffer alone’ in this mute
discordance between the cleft
of fact and imagination.
This landscape is ugly; the reason being
the presence of the self as thing.
But the question is never asked:
Is this better than suffering?
The answer comes in a silver mirror
reflecting the void of a shrivelled soul:
to suffer brings a sense
of alive, not the painless inanition
of a statue bronzed
by a glow of worthless veneration.
Then suffer she shall.
But how shall she suffer?
By removing the creature
from the depths of soul;
unmasking and unmaking
the self in a transfigured
prospect denuded of view.
The fall of a queen
is demanded, and the fall
from a throne resounds to a ruckus
of trembling mountains,
the fall of a city,
and the flap of fleeing birds.
The high hills move lightly
and are nothing.
To think the thing out of landscape
is the thing; the impossible thing,
her imagination throwing itself
into battle’s sting
on behalf of a beaten cause:
to be like a god, to emulate
the emptying of the self
at the breath of the original dawn.