By Richard Mather
Said the professor — I am in a vortex,
a maelstrom, below the eye’s surface,
standing on the abyssal plain, the fundament
of all that is. The atmosphere is moving
thickly, dark submarine green, the tempo
of sea-bed’s colour, darkly illumined
and populated by gods, the eternals,
singing songs of Necessity and Fate.
And a word carved deep on the forehead
of the chief eternal stares straight at me
like a cyclopic eye — That word is destiny.
Tonight’s voices from the busy road below;
rain falling on moving cars; the lamp
suffusing this room with light — are, always.
A moment is and is always, since whatever is
cannot come from nothing or cease to be.
Every change in this world is but the start
of an appearing or a disappearing.
When firewood burns and ashes appear,
this does not mean the firewood is destroyed.
It is the disappearing of the firewood’s appearance
and the appearance of the appearance of ashes.
To appear is the appearing of a thing’s
appearing so that what appears is not only
the thing, but also the thing’s appearing.
At birth you appear and your appearing
appears too; and when you are gone, not only
do you no longer appear but your appearing
does not appear either. Death is not
annihilation but merely the way in which
the body and its appearing exits
the horizon of appearances. What is real
is real forever. The fact of being is true,
always. What once occurred occurs even now,
though hidden, and occurs at the last, that is,
on the earth’s last day when all beings
are gathered together, awaiting
their full unveiling. This is destiny.
The professor woke up from his vision,
his strange dream. I have seen, he said,
the Angel of Destiny and it spoke
with two voices. One mouth uttered,
Rejoice! There’s an eternity for everything
on the earth and under the heavens.’
And the other mouth spoke a thin hush —
‘Have you ever heard anything more divine
or does it induce in you a great nausea
making you curse every hurt and error
that was done unto you and committed by you?’
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