Arguments with destiny: 16

“I write my life.” ~ D. Bonta

Drink quickly, we’re told. Live
immediately
, before the stream

changes course, before the water
makes good on the threats

it is always making about our utter
effacement, our certain oblivion.

So what if it does? Don’t linger
in the bath that certain evenings

draw you into: all melancholy, all
purple shade and stupefying incense.

Rain or no rain, tomorrow the sky
is the ledger on which the sun

once more pawns its only diadem.
Who is without debt? Who is without

a raft or gondola of burdens?
In the crepuscular mist it’s easy

to be entranced by the long,
trailing banners of sadness,

by the fixed and illusory orbit
of their ferment. You want to know

the word with which to dispel them,
what bitten seeds to disgorge

from under the tongue. Perhaps
winter is merely winter and not

ransom of one body for another.
Perhaps the fig and the plum

burst out of their skins only
because heat has unstitched them,

and not because their hearts constrict
from a sadness they cannot bear.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Contingency.

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