Absque Vita Tali, Verbum Quoad Litteram Est Mortuum
Outside, rain and the un-warm wind of December, with no Sun - no
Summer - to warm and bring that joy of wakeing to see the sky deep
full of blue so that one smiling is eager still, as youth again, to
egress forth toward the sea.
Now I in a rainy month - and approaching my three score and ten -
possess both an internal and an external knowing of just what the
passing of earthly Time doth to we fragile biological beings, for:
I am an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces
And yet the flow of Life flows on, here - there - when the outer
husk, failing, dies, so that I reminded of what I pastly wrote to a
friend, having now been so gifted with the gifts of one more solar
year:
What, therefore, remains? What is there now, and what
has there been? One genesis, and one ending, of one nexion whose
perception by almost all others is now of one who lived and who
wrote ἐξ αἰνιγμάτων.
τό θ᾽
ὑπέργηρων φυλλάδος
ἤδηκατακαρφομένης τρίποδας
μὲν ὁδοὺς
στείχει, παιδὸς
δ᾽ οὐδὲν
ἀρείων
ὄναρ ἡμερόφαντον
ἀλαίνει. [1]
For there does seem much worth now, a special new species of
slowly-joy, to so and so shadowly wander, supported by a stick,
since Time itself, unmeasured, stills and one is able to feel the
numinous as if flows through, with, such presencings of Life as one
meets, greets, passes. As when that other day I walked to wander -
never now far from home - and that young unknown stocky man,
girlfriend beside and smiling, bade me compliments of the season.
Such life there, such potential there, in both, and one was glad to
be alive, still, even if no Sun broke forth in warmth. Or glad as
when in slow walk in woods nearby wind shook trees to breathe again
one's wordless connexion with this living Earth, so strong so strong
it became as if one could go back there to where one's loved ones
lived, unbroken by such selfish deeds as might have saved them or at
least made happier their so short time on Earth. And I was so happy,
so happy there remembering those good times, shared, with them.
There has thus grown, within because of age, both a new knowing of
how needful is our need for compassion and of a new if sad
perception: of just how many many centuries we forgetful biological
beings may need. But all I can do now is walk, remembering, hoping:
my words, my dreams, a bridge.
For I am no enigma, my life bared by writings such as this. For
words live on to tell just one more story, of redemption. But who
will read them when life lives within this husk no more?
David Myatt
December 2011 CE
[1] Thus, he of great Age, his foliage drying up
And no stronger than a
child, with three feet to guide him on his travels,
Wanders - appearing a
shadow in the light of day.
Aesch.
Ag 79-82