“Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we humans live in an unwalled city.” ~ Epicurus
When the radio alarm kicks on at 7:15,
there’s an NPR interview with a writer
who’s talking about how the world
became modern— Still blurry with sleep,
I listen to a few anecdotes about burning libraries,
then some talk about the Renaissance; and of one
Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to several popes,
who found a copy of Lucretius’ On the Nature
of Things in a German monastery— which
everyone thought had been all but lost for the last
thousand plus years. This is the same Lucretius
who wrote about Epicurus, not to be confused
with the website Epicurious (“for people who love
to eat”), where on Thursday the featured recipe
was Turkey Meatballs with Cranberries and Sage.
According to the writer being interviewed,
Lucretius’ text (really a paraphrase of Epicurus)
offered readers a view of a world where the most
important human endeavor was the avoidance
of pain. The world itself was made of wobbly
atoms that jiggled and swerved through space,
sometimes colliding with each other to produce
other complex forms of matter, including humans.
In this old-new world, there are no gods, there is
no afterlife, no heaven or hell: and thus the good
philosopher and poet advise that the sager path
is the enjoyment of life and the relishing of its
pleasures. No need to fear death, as when we die,
our atoms will fizz into the ether and our selves,
as we know them now, will vanish. Why not walk
outside to the porch with a coffee mug in hand,
sit in a chair and set your feet upon the railing?
Bring a saucer of buttered toast spread with some
thick-cut marmalade or a trickle of honey, a book,
some poetry. Enjoy the pearly light while it lasts,
and the quiet: before the day and its many
distractions lays siege to whatever little rim
of pleasure you’ve drawn around this moment.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Listening to Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes
- Eating Dried Fish With Our Hands
- Encore
- Dear nostalgia,
- What We Look For
- Without Translation
- Heart Weighted With Cares
- Fables
- Tableaux Vivants
- Listening to Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat Major, Op. 28, No. 15
- Fountains
- Dear solitude,
- Nocturne
- Frontispiece
- Landscape, with Notes of Red
- Blue Stone Blues
- Landscape, with a Glimpse of the Soul as it Leaves the Body
- How I Came to Writing
- When does the hunger abate;
- Dear errant winds at dusk,
- Aerogramme
- Dear scarlet-flushed, hydraulic,
- Monday’s News
- Counterpoints
- Landscape, with Traces of Prior Events
- On the Nature of Things
- Spell Against Grey
- Landscape, with Castoffs on the Sidewalk
- Sleepless Ghazal
- Last Call
- Delivery Confirmation
- Landscape, with Early Frost and a Dream Interior
- Campus Elegy
- Petrichor
- Ghazal: Chimerae
- Maguindanao Ghazal
- Insurgent Song
- Paper Ghazal
- Ghazal of the Transcendental
- Hot Lyric
- On the sense of danger or foreboding, the prickling
- Postcard from the Labyrinth
- Hunger
- Debris
- Letter to One Seeking Flight
- Unbelievable Ends
- In the chapel of perpetual adoration,
- Night Rain
- Conversation that Ends with a Dream of Accounting
- Lyric on the Edge of Winter
- Paper Cut #2
- Herald
- Walking
- And once again,
- Prayer Among the Stones
- Call and Response
- Recover
- Dark Prayer
- Song of Snow
- Santa Milagrita
- Song without Strings
- Morning Song