Decreation

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.