751. AT LEAST WE EXIST

AT LEAST WE EXIST
'And the doors shall be shut in the street';
(Eccles. 12). The man who possesses no
reality, like a scarecrow, rules over his
(barren) field. Let me also wear such
deliberate disguises...in a field, behaving
as the wind behaves. And into the mirror now
there shines a light - 'Moon Castro Eventual
Comfort Eternal Rest Sofa'. The teas and coffees
steam their little smokes as we, at rest on the
precipice, detract our blank attentions from
their day. 'It was on Tuesday I worked, and
then all those snows came; the wild, windy
morning, and, though tired, I still had quite a day.'
They are lined up at the corner, all these people
now, waiting for the slushy light. Behind old
Nassau Hall, to my right, some kind of a Sun is
rising. I do not know why the gardeners are yet
at work, why the snowfall is being moved by
machinery of a great production...
-
'She has eyes, eyes of a bold brown Spanish
face that oh! if I only knew! (The space between
us grows, where that space should only close).
-
And thus the prophet said, 'if all things are vanity
'midst this colloquial divide, then such things as
meaning and moment deride every moment we live
and I and we are living for nothing.' I am living on
Dante's broken shelf, living without promise or
blame, and what this is, a boring life this is, it
can surely bring me to shame. ('We do not wish
anything to happen; seven years we have
lived quietly, succeeding in avoiding notice,
living by only partly living').
-
The signpost on Lattimore Way, I noticed,
was writ by a broken hand - some twenty years
back and more. The letters had dissolved to a
pale, painted fade : 'So far as we do Evil or
Good, we are Human - and it is better, in a
paradoxical way, to do Evil than to do
nothing at all. At least we exist, at least
we exist, at least we exist, at
least we exist...'