I believe we have enough to look at these days by way of painting, sculpture, design and architecture. We don’t, though, have enough of a sense of what moves over and against these objects of beauty. That movement is the Poem itself. The poem that I’d like to name as of the future, where words take on not the creation of a physical world but participate in the continuation of the creation of a reality that doesn’t end with symbology.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke worked very closely with Rodin for some years. Through this, he developed the idea of the “thing-poem,” where, rather than expressing one’s subjective inner life, a poem aims to continue the creation of a thing itself. I am interested in furthering this idea.

Rilke wanted to work poems – words – like Rodin worked bronze, marble and clay. To perfect a mould, to spend days carving a leg, a nose, a wing – this, too, is the nature of the poet’s work. In a sense, it is deeply akin to the work of a sculptor, for poems live three (and more) dimensionally; they are formed, sometimes unfinished, sometimes complete. The difference is that they are not affected by time in the way sculptures are. They reside solely in the time around objects that continues to move and hangs in a place of eternity until a word grants its entry into our linear motion. Poems live in the infinite around the representation.

Many sculptures came about because of poetry. Rodin’s Gates of Hell continued Dante Alighieri’s work as a poet by bringing the Inferno into physical representation. One could say that his sculptures represent the very essence of a poem. But how can a poem represent matter in a way that actually clarifies its origin, purpose, and condition, thus transcending representation? In other words, instead of merely being words that evoke imaginations and inspirations, how can poems actually reach for and clarify the intuitions around, behind, and within matter itself?

The Enlightenment shifted consciousness toward the understanding that individuality itself is grounds for equality, where every human being, though different, possesses dignity. It also invited the belief that all are capable of being trained for any profession. This led to various works of literature that had self-determined, individualistic undertones, as well as radical transformations of what had previously been the norm. For example, the playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote the significant and complex Nathan the Wise, which grapples with the three leading religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and makes each the brother of the other. Lessing’s life is of itself a good example of the Enlightenment impulse; he was in constant pursuit of knowledge and thought, with an intense interest in theater and drama, and when he wrote Nathan the Wise, despite it now being a highly revered piece of German literature, he was quite poor and ailing.

Following the Aufklärung came the Sturm und Drang, or the “Storm and Stress” era. This period occurred in the late 1700’s and was the original impulse that led to Romanticism through writers such as Novalis, the Schlegels, Goethe, and more. Sturm und Drang writers protested much of what Enlightenment thinkers had brought forth in an effort to distance themselves from rationalization (which the Enlightenment was so fond of), and instead cultivate reverence for the life of feeling. This turn is what makes the Sturm und Drang epoch specific. Though it continued to value the Enlightenment’s self-determination, it did so through the lens of nature, simplicity, and Heimat (‘‘homeland’’ in English, though there is no truly appropriate translation of this word). Nature and Heimat emulated the integrity of mankind, and through going inward, to the creative powers of the feeling-life, true works of art were born.

Perhaps the most notorious contributor to Sturm und Drang was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Famous for fusing self with world, Goethe produced many literary gems, such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust. He also made noteworthy advancements in the realm of natural science. He is known to have said: “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.” This sentiment is reflected in much of his writing, which often portrays protagonists in the intense pursuit of knowledge who, in the spirit of Sturm und Drang, often become sidetracked by their overwhelming life of feeling and thus are in a constant state of striving.

Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther is written in an epistolary manner, and tells of a bright and well-educated man who writes to his friend Wilhelm of the agonies and anguishes of the intense love he feels for a certain Charlotte. “I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy!” young Werther proclaims in one of his letters. This drift from the Enlightenment’s commitment to reason towards Romanticism’s raw sentimentality also exemplifies the socio-cultural reality that influenced Goethe’s biography. He was a very learned man who could have chosen to become a lawyer, but instead felt compelled to turn his life’s work toward the revelation of inner human truths, such as are expressed in young Werther’s letters. Goethe did, however, in his later life, join Schiller in moving away from Strum und Drang toward German Classicism, distancing himself from some of his more emotional motifs.

Werther’s emotional experiences are often reflected in nature, whether it be in a storm or in a depiction of a serene pastoral valley. This is a key difference from the Enlightenment, for human feeling as present and reflected in nature is not immediately rational. Werther describes how “universal love is palpable in nature” and how he sees “man’s wholeness in [nature].” This discovery mirrors the inner strivings of both Goethe and the spirit of his time, though he was by all means a harbinger of this new motivation.

I have discovered that in reading works of literature I can be carried through portals of time and emerge with a better comprehension of myself and the era in which I currently live. I can also appreciate literature as a geographical aid—inviting us into the stories and thought-worlds that took place on one specific piece of land. Certain geographies serve as centers throughout time, and this shifts from century to century. Two hundred years ago, Middle Europe was involved in creating art that stirred the spirits of revolution and transformation into action, while later that century, the American Transcendentalists would swoop in to continue that work.

What is the literary canon? Why have some writers’ works gone down in history while others have not? It will take much more exploration for me to reach the answers to these questions. But I can sense that each era of literature stands alone with its unique qualities and converses also with all of time.

Although Aufklärung and Sturm und Drang battled with one another, they both had an innate respect for self-determination and individual pursuit. Kleist’s Broken Jug is in dialogue with Lessing’s Nathan the Wise about religious archetypes and allegory. Hoffmann’s Sandman converses with Büchner’s Woyzeck about the condition of the mad man, and the Grimm’s Fairytales often explore a similar relationship to Faust’s battle with good and evil. Thus, all the epochs and their most respected works are in concentric relationship, and my understanding of what it means to be a human being is ever enhanced by concentration on great works of literature.

The shift from the Enlightenment era to Romanticism in German literature is only a small piece of the literary canon, but it helps me ground myself in what continues to take place in the West. Contemporary literature still navigates the relationship between rationalism and romanticism. The poem today must “make sense” to some degree, but should also tug at the deepest part of our conscience, feeling life, and sense of humanity. We still don’t have the compass to chart this course between polarities with “success.” I think that is because the literature of the future is a sort of third pole to all dualism, which can only be prepared for through centuries swung on the pendulum. One day the ground will be fertile for new literature, perhaps a literature of the will, of writing the world into being, to occur.

As I drive across America, now the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I notice that the elements of this land stand for more than property, however private or proper our real estate may be. I have to subdue my latent longings for a rustic homestead far past Main Street, where life can happen on my terms, and conquer my wish to recline on a wooden rocking chair that overlooks a pristine lake and sits on the land that somehow, in this imagination, I own. I have to get past that because it doesn’t have anything to do with the future I ultimately feel we are heading for. It also isn’t the future I’d like to think the land has in mind.

Why? Because there isn’t much creativity involved in roosting in a spot you like, surrounded by people you like. It’s the easy way out, and it’s grown anachronistic. Nature, aside from providing building materials, food, and resources, has a secret realm of sounds that create a whole world beyond our senses. A world that most certainly doesn’t participate in questions of ownership. This is the sort of nature I try to notice as I drive criss-cross over the United States.

In 1963, Bob Dylan wrote a song called “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” In it, he tells quite effectively of this other world. “I stood unwound beneath the skies," he sings, “and clouds unbound by laws. The crying rain like a trumpet sang, and asked for no applause.” Ah, yes. It can be easy to disregard, but the rain actually cries and sings like a trumpet. It asks for no applause. The clouds are unbound by laws. Have we yet really considered this?

I find that the heartland of America offers us a special glimpse into the territory of nature that sings and writes stories all on its own. One could accuse me of sentimentality or even naivety, for I’ve grown up partially in the Midwest and consider it a sacred place. And yet I have come to know this through an effort to zoom out into objectivity. Look. The skies here are huge. Storms glide like small braille markings across the summer tablature. The prairies weave winds in secret markings across their grasses. The forests glimmer with the brightness of white pine and birch and are spotted with consequential sumac that dots its i’s and red-winged blackbirds to cross its t’s. You can read the world more easily here. A world just past our senses that cannot be owned or strategized, that is.

Dylan ends his song by saying: “I gazed down in the river's mirror, and watched its winding strum. The water smooth ran like a hymn, and like a harp did hum.” Just the other day, I drove along the Mississippi River and saw fishermen, speedboats, and pontoons gliding recreationally across its mirrors. The drone of the boats was a weary tune. The docks and lawns and driveways of our lives are their own weary tunes. This country buzzes with weariness. As I wind past that watery artery of America, I don’t pretend things are below as they are in heaven, but I strain to hear the tune that none of us can pay to hum or learn to hum.

It’s fine and good to own a boat and a yard to put it in. Just remember that you’ll be sailing over and against a hymn, and on another level, led by a harp’s hum no matter where you settle and what you buy.

What might the esotericist do? Today, the mystic plays a minor role in the road trip, or is made a mockery. What sort of gnosis might it take to unravel our abstractions and get ourselves on the road, truly? We don’t drive here and there to find things. We go places to create ourselves. We further our development as inner works into outer, and when the exoteric takes a mighty dive into the most overgrown, esoteric pitstop. The wayside flows over with old soul-vagabonds, those forgotten essentials of a childhood past, or a self forgotten. I think being a mystic means achieving liminality most of the time.

But mysticism is under scrutiny. We scour it with goggles and Google and now spotless AI definitions. Could we get rid of its “ism” and just call it attention? Conscious cognition? Eureka?

I turn the music down, put on cruise control, and feel myself flying slightly ahead of myself, as the delicate composition that is my body hurls at 80 miles an hour toward what is neither predestined nor fabricated. I am driving east-to-west, on duty, so to speak. At least chasing the minor duties that a 25-year-old incarnation invites. The tasks that one grasps at, because one knows a future awaits.

Samuel Beckett, the oftentimes atheist-existentialist and author of the iconic Waiting for Godot, tells us through his characters Vladimir and Estragon that time is up for grabs. Someone comes along and fills it for a while, in their case the slave-driving Pozzo, and then it slips back into their hands, and they twiddle it into infrequent threads of abstraction. This can be a lens through which to view the day-to-day. Duties are, after all, there to fill time. But it is up to us whether we remain abstract in the in-between moments, when life gets most real. Beckett absorbs that methodology to its tipping point: Vladimir and Estragon never achieve agency.

Bob Dylan, in a lesser-known outtake of his called “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” sings: If I can save you any time, give it to me, I’ll keep it with mine. There, the “keeping of time” is an offering, a consolation to a loved one. I can protect your time; give it to me: I’ll file it away with mine. This is the ultimate act of kindness.

Abstraction is absolved when kindness enacts itself in such a gesture of sacrifice. I will keep your time. I will tend to your eternity.

On the road, most images are forgettable. Landscapes fly by, mixed with the whiz of local biz and jacked-up billboards. Especially in America, it is easy to look out of the window and remember little. This is important. The motion of a mystical journey doesn’t need to store away spatial depictions, but moves through them, collecting them in an energetic shot at the future. Moreover, on the freeway, time enters a liminal space, where arrivals and departures morph into a sort of moving metamorphosis that I can only imagine resembles death. I am reliant on a vehicle until it stops moving. But then what?

In the same song, Bob Dylan writes: You may search, babe, at any cost. But how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost? Often, I forget what I am looking for as I look for it. I gas-pedal toward the future while everything most essential to me is packed into my trunk. I wait for God while my dearest friend and confidante sits waiting with me. These are the tales and tribulations of the existentialist-doomer-cynic-idealist-romantic mishaps we make ourselves into. But the mystic! Maybe she creates herself in the face of not finding herself, time and time again.

Liminality is not slippery. It is easy to make it such, though. Between sleeping and waking, we can slip on our dreams to the extent that they become false personas. But conscious liminality, where a world that is normally unseen becomes as real to us as our road trip destination, that kind of awareness is what I strive for. To enter into death at every moment, not with a pocketed philosophy ready to pull from and provoke with, but with nothing at all. Nothing other than a heart that beats, yes, but lives past its own beating, in that sacrificial place Dylan writes about, where time is saved by those most intimately connected to us.

The first act of Waiting for Godot ends with “yes, let’s go,” and neither of the characters goes anywhere. An exoteric destination is the same if we bombard the journey with slogans. But if we dissolve our jargon with conscious inner activity and enter into the liminality of near-death even as we breathe and beat and balance, maybe we can make something of our living selves.

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*If you’d like to hear my cover of the song I’ve mentioned here, check it out :)

I am not used to being answered. I think very few of us are. We, especially young people, ask a whole lot of questions and revert to living them out, in hopes of the proverbial answer. This endurance can last a lifetime, if luck abides. But answers come slim, uncontoured, and sometimes affection-less.

I am not used to being met. I can shake many hands a day, if I make that an intention. I can look into many eyes. I can talk. But that moment of taking true interest in the other, and receiving genuine attention in return, grows considerably rare as I tread through time. Yet we cultivate social life daily. We even have media for being social. Gosh, we are really trying to meet each other!

I speak, I speak, do you hear it?

I am not used to listening beyond sound. I relish my own voice; we all do. I invoke sound because sound gives space a substance. Musicians know this deeply. But there is a sound that exists in time, too. Silently. Often in between the “Hello, how are you” and the “I’m good,” there is a profound word made of something entirely else.

This “not being used to” is why I sometimes address the spiritual world as loudly as I can. With anguish and integrity. I seek not a response, but responsibility. I know there is a kinship between me and the unseen, a tending. I find ultimate attention, where reality is something that can be attended. I recover a listening beyond sound, because obviously an empty room cannot be heard.

Angels are not super popular today. Modernity has made them corny. As a child, I was led to experience my angel as a creative force that worked in a realm we term “play.” As an only child, I played with my angel, essentially. And that was normal. But as my friendships deepened, I began to have playdates in social spaces that were lively, but distanced me from the primal source of my higher self. This was the first death-process in my life. The wisdom of my angel fled as I landed in the playground, on the swing, in the classroom. I shouted in games.

At the dawn of my twenties, I experienced the next death-process, where the fervent activity of my inner-life mellowed into stoicism—a more moderated, assimilated, social self. Oh angel, who are you then? Who are you in adulthood?

I think every “adult” can remember that they were once guided, and in some sense, being only in my mid-twenties, I am still held by something within the empty room. Something that knows me. I remain partially recognizable. But the angles of the walls grow tighter around me. I am sure all “adult” readers know this confinement. Geometry tightens through living. The finite grows evermore perceptible. One wrangles space into infinity, shoving it about in hopes of initiation.  

I await that next death-process, where new life must ignite within me, if I am to bring anything fresh to this world. Hence, the speaking to an empty room. The wielding of intentional words, of meditative selfhood, to force myself, somehow, back into the spiritual world. 

Methodologies, throughout life, can remain childish. We ruffle that well-known creative impulse of childhood, just as a junky scrunches up his sleeves to receive a fix. Yet biography must be transformation. It must be reintegration with angelic beings, not as pupils, but as colleagues. 

This methodology is not something I know. I still speak in sound. But there are moments of communion, where I am granted participation in the creation of the world. This rarely happens with other human beings. That is the tragedy of not yet knowing how to truly enter the social, relational sphere. It can feel so fake there; so often phony. But this is the striving: to turn my anguish, my speech, into a lens through which to act. Not hastily, not childishly, not with detachment, but with complete entrance.

Can you hear me in this empty room? I am more monk than I know. So are you. Our cells breathe. May language find its liturgy. May we all find literacy in listening. May liminality unfurl its wings.

Dionysius the Areopagite (also called Pseudo-Dionysius), a Christian philosopher and living human being from the sixth century, would say that, were I to reach such immaterial supersensibility, I might truly comprehend God, or the Cause of All, as he puts it. He claims that ultimate darkness is the only reality capable of shedding light on a true but unknowable knowledge of God. Today, the bright light of my computer screen tells me as much, but does not invoke a sense of solidarity, as Grok is not a striving human being, as philosophers are.

In his Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius writes that there is a darkness far above the light of the material, sense-perceptible world, wherein God’s Word resounds, but cannot be heard—it is a “hidden silence.” He emphasizes the necessity of abandoning the seductions and passions—moreover, everything that is perceived or understood—of the material world, in pursuit of cultivating a sight for the mysterious and the mystical. This, advises Pseudo-Dionysius to his friend Timothy, is absolutely requisite if one wishes to be “lifted to the ray of the supersubstantial divine shadow.”

Could one say that AI is also a “divine shadow,” cast glaringly subterranean on the opposite pole of divinity, where all knowledge accumulates into earthly, lit-up accessibility? AI offers a subterranean shadow of total accessibility, inverting the transcendent one.

It is known that the word “hierarchy” was developed by Pseudo-Dionysius (he coined the term hierarchia and gave it lasting Christian usage), which makes sense, for it is a crucial concept in his descriptions of enlightenment. He makes clear that not every average Joe is worthy of attaining enlightenment (or should I say, endarkenment). Only those who have abandoned material preoccupations, or who fully understand the fact that they are not knowledgeable about anything, can be initiated into this mystical realm. No atheists or skeptics allowed; no one who is “caught up with the things of the world.” Aha. Today on earth, the hierarchy in place has a lot to do with those in tech, who are running the future of things. Those “at the top,” so to speak, are the ones who are cultivating knowledge and light to a great extent. This seems to further the notion that we are living on the other end of the stick from what Pseudo-Dionysius described.

Furthermore, Pseudo-Dionysius says that the Trinity exists as a thing of utter darkness—unknowable, unintelligible, and impossible to comprehend. Therefore, it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that are free of all material substance, living at the top of the sacred order. He then describes the environment surrounding the Trinity. He describes it as a non-material, incorporeal reality that is “beyond unknowing and light.” Here, he touches on important ideas about the fundamental beliefs of Christian mysticism, namely, that inhabiting this summit of divine being is God’s Word, the ultimate theological destination.

The theology of today has become increasingly knowable. Wherein dwell the mysteries anymore? Grok says, “They dwell, in short, wherever attention turns with reverence and without premature closure.” Pseudo-Dionysius says that to attain knowledge of the holy trinity and God’s Word, one must “know beyond the mind by knowing nothing.” This completely cancels AI.

Pseudo-Dionysius told us that the most mystical, and in some sense, enlightened thing that one can do is not know. With technomaterialism, however, comes a certain knowing that turns the mystical concept of knowledge into a thing of materialism—of easy answers, thought-provoking quips, and ultimately, irreverance for words, as they form into meaning in the blink of an eye.

Pseudo-Dionysius made a good case, which could be seen as a “wake-up call,’’ for paying attention to how bogged down in the bright light of material knowledge one can become. By accepting more uncertainty—more darkness—into my idea of knowledge, I could come closer to comprehending the metaphysical. Of course, this is quite difficult to do with AI as our new, all-knowing friend. That bright light is not getting any dimmer. But we are theology on earth—the workings of supersensible within the molecular. There is creativity there, too, and we toil in the consequences.

Alfarabi believed in four practices required to create a social basis for general happiness. These include theoretical virtues, deliberative virtues, moral virtues, and the practical arts. The word ‘‘virtue’’ in this context means ‘‘excellence,” as in Aristotle’s functional definition: the virtue of a thing is that which enables it to perform its proper function well (e.g., the virtue of a flame is its light and heat).

The theoretical virtues pertain to what Alfarabi calls the “rational soul.” To cultivate these virtues means to perfect the intellect through knowledge and science, of both the material and metaphysical realms. True knowledge of God, for example, is considered to be a theoretical virtue. This aligns with Aristotle’s elevation of contemplative wisdom (sophia) as the highest intellectual virtue. The goal of these virtues, says Alfarabi, is for the rational soul to attain immortality through development in earthly life, such that it might subsist without the body upon death.

The deliberative virtues relate to man’s excellence in applying the aforementioned theoretical virtues to reality. Deliberative virtues spring from thinking into action. A leader of society, therefore, must have well-developed deliberative virtues and be capable of relating many interdisciplinary sciences to the practical workings of society. This requires attention to the means by which one can attain a good end, not merely knowledge of that good end.

Alfarabi’s moral virtues underscore the capacity for moral excellence in the human being. He emphasizes the development of virtues such as courage, generosity, and self-control. He says that most people are not born with these virtues, and that they take hard work and a great deal of inner striving to attain. A supreme ruler, however, must have a disposition that is more compatible with these moral virtues. He says that such virtues are primarily required for the ‘‘supreme ruler’’ to recognize which goals are actually good and worth pursuing. These virtues, once developed, can connect human beings to the “divine intellect.” This seems like a good nugget to hold on to.

The fourth thing required to create the social basis for general happiness is the practical arts. This refers to a wide array of arts, including political art, or art of leadership, as well as vocational creative arts such as music, writing, medicine, weaving, metalwork, and so on. Such skills, assures Alfarabi, are necessary for a society to thrive. Yes. Amidst a modernity that encourages less and less knowledge of the practical arts, this seems especially valuable.

If someone were to possess all four of these qualities—theoretical, deliberative, and moral virtues, as well as skill in the practical arts—they would then be considered to be ‘‘tahqīq al-dhāt,” a word that translates to “self-actualized,” though it came about far before Maslow popularized that term in the 20th century. This person would therefore have attained the right to be a supreme leader who can cultivate true happiness within the common citizen.

Alfarabi concludes by describing how these potentials for happiness are cultivated in a person either via instruction or the formation of character. “To instruct is to introduce the theoretical virtues in nations and cities. The formation of character is the method of introducing the moral virtues and the practical arts in nations. Instruction proceeds by speech alone” (565).

It should be noted that for Alfarabi, the happiness of those who are not capable of studying philosophy is dependent on the structure and workings of society that he has laid out here. The purpose of the government, therefore, is to arrange and manage the “non-philosophers” to promote their happiness as much as possible. Those who are most fit to govern, however, are those capable of studying and, more importantly, comprehending philosophy. Importantly, he notes that the ruler should be both philosopher, legislator, and imam (religious leader). This is crucial to the ideal effect that a ruler will have on society: reverence and submissiveness from the common folk. If a leader is “self-actualized” and also a philosopher, legislator, and imam, he will be capable of habituating, persuading, and coercing the members of society to live in such a way that happiness will necessarily spring forth. This is where his contribution obviously falls short when it comes to modern ideals of democracy and egalitarianism. Since his time, it has been proven that methods of habituation and coercion do not reap happy fruit.

Lastly, Alfarabi believed that religion is philosophy for the masses: it persuades rather than proves; philosophy, on the other hand, understands religion for what it really is through ‘‘metaphysical science.’’ We must ask, he says, not only whether something is, but also why it is. For this process, he describes certain principles that can be applied: namely, the principles of instruction and the principles of being. It is through the former that one comes to know the latter. He then suggests that, if one were to inquire into the principles of being of the ‘‘heavenly bodies’’ one would find that it is necessary to develop a science of the metaphysical, for there are undeniable principles that “are not bodies or in bodies, and that never were or will be bodies” (558).

Alfarabi invites the possibility that “metaphysical” or spiritual science is as vital in investigating the truth as is material science. This builds on Aristotle’s own Metaphysics, which investigates immaterial principles and causes beyond the physical world. That nugget seems to me most relevant. Perhaps if modernity took up a “science of the metaphysical,” as Alfarabi suggests, some of the virtues and practices he delineates somewhat pedantically could be taken up more organically and out of freedom. Either way, he has provided a stepping stone.

Works Cited

Foltz, Bruce, editor. Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

A stone can be sculpted into beauty. Monoliths of beauty spring forth when chisel meets rock. And yet sculpted stone is still stone. There is a certain kind of sculpting I must enact upon my soul for the event of real beauty, which hovers above and around the stone, to take place within me.

Plotinus, a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived during the third century, wrote much about beauty’s relationship to physicality in his Enneads. There, he describes self-development as key to the one who wishes to experience beauty. To describe this inner development process, he uses the image of a sculptor who hacks away at stone until the desired image leaps from it. He says the best result is achieved by “cutting away excess and straightening the crooked and clearing the dark and making it bright” until the “divine glory of virtue shines out”. Thus, the soul gains license to the higher, divine beauty living within, which is “radically transcendent” to the material world. This cultivation of inner sight, writes Plotinus, moves the soul through a purification process from “earthiness” to gold, and one can gain insight into an overarching, invisible beauty.

What does it mean for a soul to be pure, though? Today, a “pure soul” is not necessarily the most touted achievement, or at least we don’t go around praising people for theirs. In fact, it seems we are more likely to praise people for the experiences that might have muddied them or made them more robust, their complexities, or even their material successes. A purified soul, says Plotinus, grants access to the “overwhelming beauty which stays within the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the profane may see it”. This sounds nice, but it bypasses the modern calamity of beauty. The profane, the impure, can still conceal beauty in their most overlooked regions. Isn’t that uncovering of beauty within the profane part of what we are all engaged in now on earth?

The possibility of inner sight or self-development through the methodical, sometimes painstaking, ways of a sculptor has much to do with a real encounter with the physical world, which Plotinus does not fully address. He moved us forward in understanding beauty, but this day and age has moved beyond Neo-Platonism, which one can easily observe. There are more realists than idealists running things today. How does the materialism (Plotinus’ “earthiness”) of today, which shows up at levels as intense as artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, and bioengineering, have any potential to ascend and purify into gold? Plotinus paves the way for bypass, and it is enticing. But what of earth? Aren’t we all here, not fully pure, walking sometimes like beasts through the maze?

To sculpt requires consciousness. This seems key. We can act upon earth with consciousness. Therein lies a new form of purification, where confronting matter with our conscious minds becomes a modern sacrament. The magic of holding a smartphone and sending texts to far-distant recipients isn’t a fluke in the evolution of consciousness or the development of the soul. It is a direct entry into a subterranean reality that we are all agreeing to. And even if it often seems like pixels and flashing lights parading in the name of beauty, the calamity of beauty lives there, too. The possibility of purification lives in the soul’s sculpting itself into the most intimate relationship with the profane.

Living through matter proves necessary. Modernity wants visible beauty to be understood on the road to invisible beauty. There are no detours in the 21st century. Perhaps Plotinus’ “earthiness” is its own form of purification, only it is knowable, with shape, color, solidity, and not something to be hacked away. There is justice in that. To lift an image from the stone, we must first name it mineral.

Injustice today invites affluence into potentially uncharted territory: hospitality, rather than productivity. Meaning, I will strive to be a host to the one in need, rather than a distant provider. Hospitality, where money isn’t transacted, and the poor aren’t helped just because others live in luxury, but where currency is vitality, beauty, care, and attention. Culture, renewed.

In Book II of the Republic, numerous dialogues are held on this question of justice and affluence. Thrasymachus, one of Socrates’ main challengers on the topic of justice, states that “the just is the advantage of the stronger, and the unjust is what is profitable for oneself” (344c). He asserts that affluent people are served by justice. Justice, then, is defined by the powerful and serves their interests. While this is a cynical take on the role of justice, today it is easy to observe that it holds: those who live in luxury and hold power are most free to wield justice and injustice as they please.

Socrates posits that a just society can be created based on the bare minimum. He proposes a city that includes life’s necessities: food, clothing, trade, market, currency, and workers. No rulers, no affluence. Also, no culture. This is referred to as the “city of sows” (372d), or the “healthy, simple city.” This invites tension between affluence as enabling the “performance” of justice, as Thrasymachus suggests, and simplicity as the essence of justice, as Socrates proposes.

They are interrupted by Glaucon, who is dissatisfied with this simple city. He claims that they “make these men have their feast without relishes” (372b). He wants more couches and desserts. This contradiction serves as a turning point in Plato’s Republic.

Glaucon’s dissatisfaction alters Socrates’ expression of his intention. “All right,” he says, “we are considering not only how a [just] city, but also a luxurious city, comes into being” (372e). Socrates makes it clear that “the true city is, in my opinion, the one just described—a healthy city,” but suggests looking at this “feverish city” (372e). His use of “healthy” and “feverish” emphasizes the potentially dangerous nature of desires beyond one’s basic needs.

Why is a “feast without relishes” problematic for Glaucon? On the one hand, we can criticize him and call him gluttonous. On the other hand, very few of us today are feasting without relishes. In this sense, we must identify ourselves with Glaucon, accepting that his wish to feast on relishes leads to a more complex unfolding of justice. It invites hospitality into the picture, where relishes can be shared in a non-transactional manner. I can host your questions and your striving in conversation. I can host your pain by tending to you. Moreover, feasting with relishes includes culture, which Socrates excluded from his simple city, and which we are certainly steeped in right now. I can host you in a classroom or a theater.

Plato was, of course, deeply suspicious about culture’s relationship with justice—especially regarding poetry. He did not trust art in society. In one sense, Plato was right to be suspicious: today, there are also culture wars. But now that we live in a world that absolutely includes such things as education, the arts, and medicine, I am less interested in dwelling on his suspicion and more focused on the reality that we engage with these “relishes” daily.

The dialogues in the Republic go on to show how, with man’s desire for more and the invocation of a luxurious city, great lengths are crossed to achieve satisfaction, and the outcomes potentially undermine the dignity of the human being. After turning toward affluence, the dialogue addresses slavery. “The city must be made bigger. And so we’ll need more servants too” (373b). Furthermore, Socrates and Glaucon mention the necessity of war in an affluent society:

“Then we must cut off a piece of our neighbor’s land…”
“Quite necessarily, Socrates.”
“After that, won’t we go to war…?”
“Like that” (373d-e).

War is brought up as a consequence in the luxurious city. Socrates says, “We have…found the origin of war” (373e).

Today, we are at war. Today we live in a feverish city.

But let’s not forget that, while Glaucon’s comment on relishes serves as a metaphor for our desire to consume, it also serves as a metaphor for our desire to add art and vitality to our lives. The desires beyond our basic needs that are advertised left and right invite a new ethical dilemma: Do I help those in need by fulfilling their desires? Or, do I work with the reality of abundance to renew culture in service of the future? We have culture now, and it is curdling. How to keep it fresh?

If injustice is a consequence of living in a more complex and affluent world, the task at hand involves new agreements about what it is we create. Productivity can grant luxuries, but what sort of creation are we responsible for continuing? More stuff? More comfort?

Our feverish world concretely demands that we host those in need with immaterial relishes, rather than simply providing the bare necessities. This means building relational bridges with those in need, so that conversation comes before handing them money. This means using beautiful, developed spaces as venues for a truly shared culture to begin. This is getting to know the human being I am caring for, rather than handing them a pill. If the integrity of the human soul requires relishes, but not only ones that can be quantified or possessed materially, what kind of currency could originate there?

In South Africa, one lands at an airport that borders vast townships, where entire communities live in conditions that, in the West, we might call “undeveloped.” As you land in that country and drive to your dwelling, you must first pass poverty. This looks like thousands of shacks on sand. Walls and roofs are metal sheathes, bathrooms are porta-potties, and playgrounds are waysides.

What struck me to the core was that these communities rest at the foothills of the wealthiest mountains I have ever seen. I say wealthiest not to imply money, but beauty. The rock near Cape Town seems to burn with an inner fervor that comes straight from the center of the earth. I felt that the stone resides both anciently and presently, and mediates the relationship between the earth and cosmos with a powerful creative force that I have witnessed nowhere else in the world. The townships rest there.

Witnessing this invoked in me a feeling of abundance, like that of those mountains, regarding my own creative will, and, concurrent with that, an utter impasse. I felt that I could observe my own will’s potential, but go no further from there, as my own undeveloped nature sprawls the landscape of my being.

I had lunch with a family on one of these mountainsides who hadn’t been to a restaurant in two years. After eating, they welcomed us into their home with hospitality, and we sat in their small, stark setting and looked at each other. The surrounding community rang with the abundance of people on the street–children playing, adults lounging together in large groups. We looked at each other more. We were all trying to host something. Trying to arrange for the future.

What am I sacrificing by letting my will shrug off the responsibility to wake up to my place in the world? Because my place in the world has everything to do with those around me–their health and wellbeing, and the agreements we uphold. New agreements around money, land, and “resources” require creative will to begin.

This impasse between will and action has been there since my childhood. I knew then, in a more childlike way, that using my creative will requires continual entry into what could be described as the “dawning” potential of every moment in time, where the future can enter interaction, word, and thought. I felt, too, that this is not easy, nor encouraged by the conditions of modernity.

As a young child, I used to write out a new day for myself every day. I still have some of these little “lists” that, in crayon, forged a new path for play that day. Each day they vary, and one could say, “Where was her consistency or follow-through?” My creativity couldn’t yet enter the practical. As an adult, my Google Calendar boasts various meetings and work appointments weekly, and one might say, “What a rigid form to follow.” My creativity dissolves, and the task force takes precedence.

What is the real, true appointment that my creativity can fathom? What kind of thinking results from deeds done with integrity? As children, no day is “repeated,” really, and everything is done with integrity. But soaring into adulthood finds me ever aware of the cogs of my inner life, which turn in the machinery of the mundane. The impasse that is schedule, convention, and social seclusion, where awakenings are sidelined for the sake of routine.

Dawn is not only when the sun rises, or where and how, but when time begins. It is when we shift from sleep-consciousness to waking-day consciousness, where we enact our will on earth. Only there can “activism” take place. But negligence toward the dawn results in false activism. Then my doing is the result of the thought structures of yesterday, or the algorithms that my family and education taught me to live by, or the formulas of culture. There is real pain in encountering this deadness within myself in the face of the mighty tasks at hand.

I am back in New York today, and I walked with the sunrise today, and I am fumbling with my will today. I live in a beautiful community that cultivates healthy food, new forms of education, and a potentially “dawn-like” approach to the granularities of life in general. But there is still the incompleteness of our agreements around money and livelihood that permeates the globe. I am back with a crayon in hand and an empty piece of paper, trying to live in a world of abundance that has not yet entered into dawn. Dawn, where nothing that has come before can harass the new agreement, that this is a shared reality. Where a feeling of wealth actually feels as real as a mountain.

At the age of 23, Akhmatova published her first collection of poems, Evening. This marked the beginning of her literary life during what is often called Russia’s “Silver Age”—a period of intense creative blossoming that spanned the early 20th century. Throughout this time, Akhmatova was a shining light within literary circles and socialized with some of the most influential writers of the era, including Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely.

She was described by her friends as magnetic, mischievous, and deeply lovable; also as enigmatic and complex. She was known for being highly sensitive, often hysterical, neurotic, and a hypochondriac. These qualities added layers to her character and often made her difficult to understand. Standing at five feet eleven with thin, graceful features, long, straight black hair, and deep-set gray-green eyes, she was said to be a “mysterious beauty.” Of mixed heritage (Tartar, Greek, Ukrainian, and Russian), she adopted the surname “Akhmatova” after her Tartar grandmother. This was in response to her father’s teasing suggestion that she might tarnish his surname with her “lousy poetry.” Hmmm.

Akhmatova’s first admirer came at the age of thirteen, in the form of Nikolai Gumilyov, or Kolya. Their relationship was marked by the intensity of Kolya’s unrequited love, which led him to a suicide attempt on one occasion. Before agreeing to marry him, Akhmatova wrote to her brother: “I’m marrying the friend of my youth, Gumilyov. I believe I am fated to become his wife. Whether I love him or not, I don’t know, but I think I do”.

They did indeed end up marrying. In one of Kolya’s poems, he famously described Anna as “half nun, half harlot,” a phrase later used by the Stalin regime to describe her. Although this was intended as an insult, it also encapsulates the nuances of Akhmatova’s character, which of course contribute to the honesty of her poetry.

Gumilyov was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1921 due to his “counterrevolutionary conspiracies,” just a few years after their marriage, and this tragedy had a deep effect on Anna. Her relationship with the Soviet regime became tumultuous, and it is often said that she ceased writing poetry for thirteen years following his death.

That was only the beginning. This struggle with the Soviet regime deeply shaped Akhmatova’s adult life. The Russian Revolution occurred when she was 28, and the Bolshevik censorship that followed severely impacted creativity in Russia. Akhmatova’s poetry, which often worked with questions of personal freedom, spiritual yearning, and the world of feeling, naturally faced harsh disapproval from Soviet authorities.

Now, the walls have come down, and her poetry dances more freely, able, perhaps, to do what poems have a sneaky ability to do: live out their trust task, far beyond the confines of time.

Bibliography

Davies, J. Anna of All the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. Lincoln Davies & Co, Liverpool, 1988.

Vvedensky grew up around the liberal intelligentsia of St. Petersburg, in the heat of the Bolshevik Revolution. In his early adulthood, he worked as a researcher at the State Institute of Artistic Culture, focusing primarily on Futurist abstract poetry. (Futurism, as a literary form, came about out of the modernist impulse to merge art with politics and technology. It tried to prepare for the dawning of a new era.) Shortly after this, he became a prominent figure in underground avant-garde groups, where his poetry was celebrated for its complex, seemingly abstract but demanding political symbolism.

He was, like most interesting artists during Soviet times, unable to publish his work. It was deemed detrimental to the “good of the state,” too strange, and dangerously complex. Instead, he made his living by writing children’s literature. Nevertheless, in 1931, he was arrested for his alleged “counterrevolutionary” literature and sentenced to three years of exile. Ten years later, he was detained once more and ultimately died from an inflammation in his lungs while on a prison train.

Unfortunately, much of Vvedensky’s work remains undiscovered and is likely lost. What we can read, however, shows us that his work is of high value, should not be overlooked, and offers a unique and startling commentary on life in the USSR.

The main reason the Soviet regime censored Vvedensky’s work was its complexity. The State wanted literature, as well as all art in general, to be “understandable” to the masses. This resulted in most Soviet-approved literature as mere “reflections” of reality—at least the accepted reality of day-to-day Soviet life—and a general disdain for anything abstract or “avant-garde.” This left no room for Vvedensky’s work. The degree to which his poetry is not understandable made him a direct threat to the Soviet way of life. For example, in his poem-play called “The Mirror and the Musician,” he writes:

“You God are ill

you sphere are thin

fat fleas cause

itch of the skin

O lord of lords we are offended

resentment hath our necks distended”

This reflects a direct disdain for authority, or a certain kind of authority. albeit abstractly.

Vvedensky’s poetry offers a radical commentary on the apocalyptic nature of the first half of 20th century Russia. War, revolution, regime, propaganda, and death orbited his youth. For this simple fact alone, his work should not only be studied but taken as something like an artist’s creed—promoting the creative spirit over the iron grip rigid indoctrination.

I recommend reading An Invitation for Me to Think. Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich provide the best translations.

The first issue, published in February 2025, served as a prototype, featuring visual art, poetry, and essays from around 15 people. The second, released in June 2025, centered on the theme of the light between; it explored the spaces between individuals, polarities, and spiritual and physical realms, sparking rich insights. The third issue, Fall 2025, worked with the question: Entering the Task at Hand: How are you Holding the Future? This sparked vibrant dialogue across artistic modalities and among numerous artists about what the “task at hand” is for young adults today, and how we can transform existing structures to better reflect the evolving consciousness of human beings. The idea of “entering” a task emphasizes active engagement with the demands of our times. For young adults today, the question of shaping the future is urgent and critical, and this bold theme encourages people to respond uniquely to today’s challenges and opportunities. Submissions included visual art, poetry, prose, and essays from about 20 people. The fourth issue engages the theme of resurrection and will be released in April.

The annual subscription cost is $15–$45 on a sliding scale. Payments can be made via PayPal, Venmo, or check. Email me at futuringn@gmail.com for details. Become a subscriber today to make sure you receive the upcoming April edition! Donations are welcome to support the initiative without a subscription. You can view the Fall 2025 issue here.

Unlike most contemporary publications, Futuring Now prioritizes print over digital. With nearly 100 subscribers to date, each receives three print copies annually—delivered to their door. This print focus counters the trend of confining art and poetry to digital spaces, fostering a tangible network that still aims to reflect the spirit of our time.

Print media can feel like clutter in today’s digital age, but bringing creative work into the physical world preserves a waning craft. While digital tools aid editing and design, I believe serious creative work deserves to break free from the mesmerizing glow of screens by embodying itself in the world. Futuring Now arrives at subscribers’ doorsteps, offering a real encounter with art and ideas that resist the hypnosis of pixels.

I believe individual creative work—distinct and unique—gains new meaning when placed alongside others’ contributions. In Futuring Now, this dialogue—whether through visual art, poetry, or prose—reveals a startling newness that might surprise or inspire the individual creators. This actually creates a substance of the future – one that could never have “foreseen” itself – and can awaken a new sense of communication, conducted by the creative word or image; a mode of exchange more intimately linked with the wide world of meaning that we all inwardly inhabit

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If we free up our minds a little and imagine that words on a page are musical notations for the stanzas of a narrative, literature has the potential to reference music itself. I say "reference" because words on a page are not inherently auditory: reading is a silent, internal experience. Yet, just as a musician scans sheet music and can “hear” the notes, the words of a novel or poem can be “heard” by the reader. A good book, much like a musical composition, should consist of motifs or variations on a theme that enhance its content. They should not only reference music but also strive to “transubstantiate” words into music. I will call this “metaphorical music,” which elevates the ordinary (words on a page) into a more mysterious, imaginative realm. In this way, the form enhances content, creating a musical implication and offering a new means by which meaning is conveyed in literature.

By fusing words, which stem from countless combinations of letters, with music, which relies only on twelve notes, a writer can transform literature into something truly new. This revolutionary approach defined writers like James Joyce as “modernist” authors. Joyce utilized musical structure to redefine the roles of “form” and “figurative language” in literature. He viewed language not merely as a tool for the narrative arc; instead, he allowed the words themselves to create a sound content. Consequently, the present action in his work feels secondary to the words, much like how jazz improvisation is derived from a musical standard.

The Greek word khiasmos, meaning “crosspiece” or “cross-shaped mark,” is relevant here in describing the structure of this new form of literature. By introducing threads, modernist writers created motifs that reappear later, interwoven to form a tapestry of language, where meaning depends on the machinations of the loom—weaving language into imagery via sound. Khiasmos can serve as the intersection of language and sound, where words transubstantiate into sound through the reading process. The inverse is, of course, also true, as Joyce concludes in his seminal work Ulysses, stating that music is “all a kind of attempt to talk.”

In her article “The Language of James Joyce,” Katie Wales refers to Ulysses as a “polyphonous” novel, noting its intertwining of multiple voices, particularly interior monologues. She highlights how Joyce “musicalizes” language, granting his characters the ability to “give speech to the inanimate.” This “musicalizing” of language enables the episode's narrative content via word-notes. I hope that in this “post-modern” time of confusion, we continue to write with word-notes. We could use a little song in our bestsellers and newspaper articles.

Another helpful term here is consubstantiation, which was first expressed by heretic Sabellius, suggesting that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different names for the same entity, in the same way that graphite, coal, and diamond, for example, are allotropes of carbon. Here, of course, I apply it in a secular sense—a literary sense (though, truthfully, “literature” is difficult for me to “secularize”). This metaphorical relationship is akin to the musical octave, in which three-octave notes can be played together but still produce the same note that grows exponentially. The mystery of the octave can “solve” the paradox of consubstantiation. Hopefully, it is not a stretch too far to assume that the conflation of language and music functions as a sort of consubstantiation; the written word ignites more than the human being’s sense of sight but also the sense of sound and sense of concept—each as means to the same end.

It seems to me that the modernist writers tried to “usurp” temporality by attempting to eternalize themselves in their work. This was achieved, on the one hand, by overwriting classical literature, with a particular return of the Greek epic, which transformed Ulysses, for example, into a palimpsest of Homer’s Odyssey. It was also done by using language as a means of constructing a “self” whose body is words. In terms of Heidegger’s assertion that only way into Being is through Time, the modernists attempted to join “being” through their literary pursuits. This makes literature a redemptive undertaking, spiritual in essence. The modernists were super spiritual without knowing it.

To provide an example of a musical piece of literature, I’ll reference an episode in Ulysses titled “Sirens.” It is filled with metaphorical music, words like “jangle” and “taptap” and “imprrthnn” riddled throughout it. Moreover, it ends with a crescendo, which is achieved in several ways. First, the tap tap tap of a blind man’s cane grows louder as the number of taps increases, from four to five to eight in succession, and intensifies when the protagonist begins to fart. Initially, a soft “fff! Oo!” is introduced, which is elaborated upon later by “I must really. Fff,” and reaches its climax with “my eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt,” mirrored later by “fff! Oo. Rrpr” and “pprrpffrrppffff.” After the farting and the intensified “taps” from the blind man, the episode reaches its conclusion. And yet, it ends with the word “begin!”

What could be more musical? I am sure we can all imagine this easily translated into a Spotify hit today (maybe not a super beautiful one).

The episode ending with the word “begin” makes sense if we are to approach literature in this new way. The reader grasps that all other readers in the world are contributing to the song by being at different points in the episode. They are “hearing” it simultaneously. The “begin” is merely a reminder of the polyphonic quality of this new sort of literature—the fuga per canonem within a good piece of writing. The form of a literary work must still propel the content forward, sure, yet by making his form musical, Joyce raises the question of what “forward” even means and whether the narrative arc of a story (or piece of music) is at all concerned with linearity.

The modernist poets sought to reshape literary culture while defining their interpretation of the “now.” This ambition posed a particular dilemma: how can a poet break from tradition while still aiming for a place in the literary canon—a place that must withstand the passage of time? Can a non-traditional poet remain culturally relevant as eras shift and time moves forward? This essay will explore these questions by examining T. S. Eliot’s influential essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” alongside aspects of W. B. Yeats’ mystical work, with particular attention to his theory of time. By looking at three of Yeats’ poems through the lens of both Eliot’s essay and Yeats’ conception of time, I find that Yeats’ insights help lay the groundwork for Eliot’s themes, positioning the success of a poet as dependent on transcending temporality and achieving a form of timelessness.

Literary critics have long attempted to explain why certain poets endure and how their work remains extraordinary over time. As time passes, new eras emerge, bringing fresh ways of thinking. In the modern era, this includes rebellion against much of what preceded the nineteenth century and an effort to revitalize culture. T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was published in 1919, about five years after he rose to prominence as a poet within the literary circles of Western Europe and the United States. Today, Eliot is not only recognized as a significant modernist poet but also as a revered critic of twentieth-century literature. More importantly, Eliot remains a pivotal figure in defining modernity. Modernism, deriving from the Latin modernus (meaning “just now”), encompasses much of the literature from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth century. Modernism’s expression often centers around a crisis among writers—how to accurately represent their present time. This crisis primarily concerns the reconciliation of tradition and modernity, culminating in a battle between these forces. As Eliot argues in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” these forces must ultimately unite, recognizing themselves as cut from the same cloth.

In his essay, Eliot addresses the issue of individuality in poetry, arguing that the best poetry strives for the impersonal. He writes, “It is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; (it is) not the expression of personality, but the escape from personality.” By freeing herself from personality, the poet can create an objective text from her subjective self, which is then interpreted from the subjective lens of the reader. Eliot continues by asserting that tradition becomes integral when a poet’s work attains objectivity by honoring the “immortality” of the past. In other words, the poet gleans from what came before her to continue the past as it relates to the present. In this sense, great poetry transcends time, as the poet communes with literary ancestors and the reader communes with the poet. This understanding of time aligns with the most prominent aspects of W. B. Yeats’ mystical theory of time, which he developed through his extensive study of early modern mysticism. Yeats sought to understand the poet’s holy grail: the emulation of tradition that is deeply personal yet has the potential to transcend personality through a new conception of time.

Eliot’s notion of “historical sense,” as discussed in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” reflects the idea that a poet should not merely write from within their generation but from within the broader literary canon. A good poet places themselves within the canon, making their work into a synecdoche of the whole of literature. This means that a truly great poet can represent all of poetry while retaining their individuality. This movement from individuality to timeless wholeness resonates with the mystical thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Yeats, whose approach to mysticism will be further developed later in this essay. While Eliot did not dive into modern mystical thought as extensively as Yeats, his view of distinguished literature as transcending linear time aligns with much of Yeats’ spiritual assertions. As Eliot writes, “This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional.” This suggests that a great writer, in Eliot’s view, must also be a traditional writer, transcending the temporal selfhood to partake in a broader, collective tradition.

In 1888, Yeats joined the Theosophical Society, led by Madame Blavatsky, but was expelled two years later due to his rebellious nature, particularly his opposition to her dogma. Yeats later joined the Society of the Golden Dawn, part of the Hermetic Order, which focused on the occult and mysticism. These influences profoundly shaped his poetry. Yeats sought to “unite religion and beauty, [and] the spirit and nature,” which can be seen as an aesthetic approach to Christian beliefs—to revitalize Christianity through literary tradition. Additionally, Yeats was a student of mythology, especially Celtic folklore, and also developed an interest in Eastern spiritual traditions. This immersion in mysticism and myth significantly informed his own “historical sense.” Yeats’s contribution to modern mysticism aligns with Eliot’s idea that great poetry must be impersonal. By emphasizing the role of myth, magic, and folklore in history, Yeats enables spiritual tradition to signify “eternity,” a concept Eliot suggests a poet ascends to by overcoming personality. For Yeats, however, this transcendence was in service of a higher spiritual aim and the poet’s ability to endure across time.

Yeats developed a distinctive theory of time, proposing that time is not linear but cyclical. The image associated with Yeats’ theory is the “gyre,’ a revolving spiral that both draws from and adds to the courses of time. Yeats’ “Great Wheel of Time” incorporates multiple “revolving gyres of history,” which turn on themselves while moving outward. When combined with Eliot’s concept of tradition, Yeats’s cyclical view of time suggests that a poet’s work can draw inspiration not only from the past but also from the future. In this sense, the canon of literature—like the gyre—spans beyond the linearity of time, existing simultaneously in past, present, and future. Tradition, then, becomes as much about what is “just now” as it is about what has come before and what will come. Yeats, therefore, furthers Eliot’s thesis by illustrating that tradition and modernity are not antagonistic forces but amalgamations of one another.

This essay has developed the hypothesis that a well-regarded poem transcends personality, as Eliot argues, by reaching beyond the confines of linear time and entering Yeats’ cyclical “gyre.” Yeats’ theory of time strengthens Eliot’s argument about the impersonal nature of great poetry, offering a way to reconcile the personal and the impersonal by suggesting that true poetic talent arises from a work that transcends temporal constraints. A poem with substance—one recognized by both its contemporaneous readers and future generations—joins the literary canon, existing across all moments. As William Blake elegantly states in his “Auguries of Innocence,” “To see a world in a grain of sand / and a heaven in a wild flower / hold infinity in the palm of your hand / and eternity in an hour.” Here, Blake captures the essence of encountering a worthwhile poem.

The remainder of this essay will focus primarily on the analysis of three of Yeats’ poems to illustrate both his theory of time and history, as well as to concretize the ways in which a well-crafted poem transcends individuality by joining the eternal body of poetry. The first poem I will examine is his 1919 work, “The Second Coming.” Literary critics regard this poem as a prophetic—even apocalyptic—work, and over the one hundred years since its creation, it has undoubtedly become part of the body that transcends time and stands as a substantive work. The poem’s opening line includes the words “widening gyre,” immediately introducing Yeats’ theory of time. It goes on to imagine a falcon turning in the cyclical movement of time in such a way that it can no longer hear the “falconer,” and thus, “things fall apart.” This establishes a scene of intense chaos, with falcons careening through the widening gyre into a fractured, fragmented realm. Moreover, this movement describes the shift in time from the linear—where the falcon and falconer are tethered—to the “gyre,” a place of initial disorder. This widening away from the gyre’s focal point, the present moment, is exemplified by the words “the center cannot hold,” lifting the reader into uncharted, timeless territory and moving away from the “center” of individuality that Eliot denounces.

Anarchy dominates the opening lines of “The Second Coming," advancing to an invocation of violence, with the “blood-dimmed tide” unleashed and innocence itself drowning. At the end of the first stanza, an important distinction is made between the “best” and the “worst,” which parallels Eliot’s notion of the “good” poet whose work joins the canon of poetry and the “bad” poet, who is tethered to individuality and emotion. In this moment of turmoil in Yeats’ poem, the “good” lacks conviction, while the “bad” are filled with passionate intensity. Hopefully, it is now clear that the latter state of being is abhorrent to Eliot. A “passionate intensity” does little for the striving poet, and here, in Yeats’ oracular moment, the “worst” are consumed by individualistic emotionality. The next stanza calls for a revelation—more importantly, for a Second Coming of salvation. Considering Yeats’ Christian symbolism, we can see that the notion of a “second coming" allows Yeats to transcend linear time. A “second coming” cannot occur without a cyclical sense of time. In this way, Yeats “proves” his theory of time.

The second poem I will examine was published nearly a decade later, in 1927, and is titled “Sailing to Byzantium.” This poem is one of the most notable examples of Yeats’ later works, which were deeply influenced by his study of the occult. I will begin my analysis with the last lines of the poem, which most directly relate to the content of this essay. In the closing lines, Yeats expresses his aspiration to sing to “the lords and ladies of Byzantium” about what is “past, passing, or to come.” Here is a clear example of the poet’s ability to perceive all of time at once. The poem builds towards this moment with a litany of longings, all originating from the self—the individual. These desires indicate the poet’s wish to go beyond himself. He longs for the “sensual music” of youth, the soul that redeems “paltry” old age, and, most significantly, for the sages that “perne in a gyre” and could become the “singing masters of [his] soul,” freeing him of desire and showing him the “artifice of eternity.” The word “artifice” here seems contradictory to what has been established, namely, Yeats’s gyre as a symbol of eternity itself. The key distinction, however, is that eternity in the past is no different from eternity in the present. Therefore, when the individual longs for eternity, the very nature of this longing exposes the artificiality of this imagined timelessness. In other words, eternity is not something longed for but something to be achieved. Only when the poet frees himself of his emotional plea can he ascend to a true understanding of the Wheel of Time, where the past, present, and future are one.

Finally, I will examine Yeats’ 1904 poem “Adam’s Curse.” This poem addresses the difficulty inherent in writing a great poem, as well as the pain that arises when the individual is too self-centered and bound to time—the result of the “fall of man" or “Adam’s curse.” It begins with an expression of the painstaking quality of corralling beauty into words and the effort to make a poem appear spontaneous—an ironic outcome considering the lengthy process of its creation. A poem may strive to transcend the hours spent crafting it, to the moon that breaks in “days and years.” However, the poem ends with a weary and hollow moon, failing to recognize the beauty that resides in all of time in every instant. Instead, it focuses on the temporal and mourns its inevitable loss. This ending contrasts sharply with the resolution of “Sailing to Byzantium,” showing what occurs when the self is not exalted but instead bound up in “passionate intensity,” like that in “The Second Coming.” Rather than transcendence, the result is emotional entrapment within time.

By closely examining these examples of Yeats’ poetry, informed by his mystical background and his theory of time, we can begin to sense that tradition does not derive solely from the past, as Eliot asserts, but also from the future. This offers an answer to modernism’s question of how to reconcile itself with tradition: by moving forward into the future—tradition lives there, too! While Eliot’s notion of the poet’s “historical sense,” which encourages a poet to abandon personal identity and join the overarching literary canon, was an important contribution, Yeats develops and expands this idea by introducing the gyre—the Wheel of Time—that enables the poet to transcend “identity” in the first place. Thus, writing a great poem is not necessarily a matter of self-annihilation but rather a recognition of the inherently non-temporal nature of poetry and of tradition itself.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

I

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

ADAM’S CURSE

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.’

And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Works Cited

Al-Doori, Faisal. “W. B. Yeats and Mysticism.” Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022, https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275-8314-6-sample.pdf.

“Eagle Poem” crosses the boundaries of the sense-perceptible world, revealing hidden realms in nature through simple, direct language and the image of an eagle circling the sky. This ability to unveil these “hidden arenas” speaks to Joy Harjo’s skill as a poet. The poem fulfills a key aspect of modernism by “making new” the reader’s understanding of concepts like prayer, spirituality, and the “bird’s eye” perspective. However, “Eagle Poem” is not a modernist work in the strictest sense. Modernism, with its emphasis on fragmentation and abstraction, did not engage with “languages / That aren’t always sound but other / Circles of motion,” as Harjo does. In this sense, Harjo’s work renews the modernist impulse to “make new” by suggesting a language that goes beyond sound itself. This idea of language aligns closely with what poetry, in its essence, strives to be. (Moreover, this suggests that as poetry evolves, it may come closer to defining itself more fully.)

It is important to note that “Eagle Poem” is not concerned with avant-garde or radical experimentalism often found in contemporary art. Instead, the poem draws on ancient traditions, invoking the four classical elements––earth, water, air, and fire––that many indigenous cultures have revered for millenia. Harjo writes that in order to pray, one must “open” to the “sky, to earth, to sun, to moon,” suggesting that these elements together form “one whole voice” that unites all of us. This perspective is far from modern; ancient cultures frequently engaged with the natural world on the premise of a “collective whole” between humanity and nature––a worldview that often mystifies contemporary society, which is preoccupied with the material, sense-perceptible world.

“Eagle poem” immediately separates itself from the tangible, material world by suggesting something “more”––an essence that cannot be seen, heard, or even fully understood. While the theme of what lies beyond the senses is common in poetry, which often hints at a non secular foundation, Harjo distinguishes her work by claiming that we can access this “more” through “languages/ That aren’t always sound but other / Circles of motion.” This shift, from words to motion, elevates the poem because Harjo presents movement as the means by which knowledge of the higher worlds reveals itself. In doing so, she aligns her work with a tradition of poets who have explored similar themes, but only a few have mastered the art of conveying such elusive ideas. Poets like Yeats, Blake, and Rilke, for example, were able to capture and authenticate these “circles of motion” that Harjo invokes (I will explore this more deeply in a forthcoming essay on Yeats' "time theory").

Harjo takes this timeless concept, often associated with eternity, and places it in a natural, ever-present scene: an eagle circling a blue sky above Salt River. She does not shy away from the spiritual significance of the image; the eagle has “sacred wings,” and it invites all of us into a “true circle of motion.” The repeated invocation of beauty—“We pray that it will be done / In beauty / In beauty”––underscores the central role of sacredness and harmony in the poem. In poetry, where every word carries weight, it is essential to read words like “pray,” “sacred,” “true,” and “beauty” with full attention. These words are not just ornamental; they hold the key to understanding the poem’s deeper meaning. It is important for the modern reader to consider not only what these words signify, but how they interact with the context of our postmodern, materialistic, and increasingly digital age.

Sylvia Plath wrote “Blackberrying” just a few years before her premature and tragic death in 1963. The poem offers a sharp contrast to the vibrant effervescence of Harjo’s “Eagle Poem,” introducing a darker, more desolate tone through words like “nothing” (repeated multiple times), “heaving,” “blood,” and “protesting.” While Harjo’s eagle soars majestically, Plath’s birds are described as “bits of burnt paper.” The poem begins with the notion of absence: “nobody” is in the lane, and “nothing” but blackberries line the sides. This barron landscape leads down to a “heaving” ocean, and the blackberries are described as “squandering” on Plath’s fingers, staining them with their “blue-red” blood. In a striking twist, Plath concludes that this “blood sisterhood” means the berries love her. At this moment, the reader should begin to recognize that the poem is not merely about the berries or the external world, but about something deeper––something beyond the immediate images it presents.

The dark, red-beaked alpine choughs “wheel” in the sky, invoking the “circles of motion” Harjo mentions in her poem. The birds’ circular flight is not coincidental; it consciously echoes the cyclical imagery found in the works of other poets, such as Yeats’ falcon turning in the widening gyre, or Harjo’s circling eagle “rounding out the morning.” Plath’s use of the word “wheel” places her in this aforementioned tradition of poets who explore themes of eternity and cyclical motion in nature. These powerful images—of birds wheeling, of berries staining with “blood”––elevate the poem’s meaning, leading the reader toward what Toni Morrison describes as the “non secular” realm, beyond the material world and into the timeless and the spiritual.

“Blackberrying” directly challenges Harjo’s idea that we are all “made of all this” and that our voices are one. Plath asserts instead that the wheeling choughs are “the only voice,” and they are “protesting, protesting.” From this stark declaration, the poem shifts into the ethereal, as the grassy fields begin to glow “as if lit from within.” As readers, we must question where these glowing fields exist. Plath had already established that there were only blackberries lining the lane, and perhaps an ocean at the end. These glowing meadows, then, cannot be literal—they must be metaphorical. But what do they represent? Are we simply taking a walk with Plath, perhaps in the late afternoon, lost in thought as she leads us through the landscape? Are we nobody, nothing, merely observing the “protesting” flocks, while the ripeness of the berries attracts only flies, turning the bushes into a “bush of flies”? Yes, but then Plath writes: “The honey-feast of the berries has stunned [the flies]; they believe in heaven.” Here, the introduction of the word “heaven” signals a shift. We are prompted to dig deeper to question the metaphorical weight of this moment.

Plath darkens the scene further as she moves toward the ocean, where a “sudden wind” begins to “funnel” around her. The hills, now described as “too green and sweet,” are portrayed as having never “tasted salt.” They seem too “glowing,” too unreal. When she reaches the shore, she is confronted with “nothing, nothing,” and stares at the “white and pewter lights” of the sea, hearing the waves “beating at an intractable metal.” This is no idyllic beach scene—Plath is not seeking comfort from the ocean, nor is the ocean offering solace. Yet, even in the face of this stark, solely materialistic landscape, the flies, intoxicated by the berries, continue to believe in heaven, and the berries, in turn, continue to love their poet. This juxtaposition of the mundane and the transcendent creates a haunting tension, as the poem reveals the complicated, layered relationship between the spirit and the material world.

What does “non-secular” truly mean? What is this vast realm—sometimes described as spiritual, sometimes as religious, and other times simply as a moment of awe or epiphany—trying to convey? We might begin by asking why early mornings so often draw writers like Toni Morrison into a space that feels distinct, even sacred. The first light of the sun, the silence, the movement of one’s own thoughts––these are all good places to start. In the same way, images like the “heaving” ocean or the blackberries that “must love me” in Plath’s poem, and the opening of one’s “whole self” in Harjo’s poem, point toward something larger. But to truly understand the “non secular” nature of a poem, the reader’s attention should focus on words like “pray” and “heaven,” which help to unlock how “non-secularity” is an inherent component of any powerful poem.

In “Eagle Poem,” the word “pray” frames the poem, appearing at both the beginning and the end. This framing transforms the poem itself into a prayer, a concept that becomes particularly apparent at the conclusion, when we, as readers, find ourselves praying alongside the poet and thus the “true circle of motion” is completed “in beauty.” We are neither the eagles, nor the lake, nor the sky; rather, we are human beings, consciously engaging in prayer––anointing natural imagery with reverence and thus imbuing it with beauty. In contrast, “Blackberrying” presents the non-secular in a more unsettling way. The flies, indulging in sweetness and blood, “believe in heaven,” though their belief is both absurd and ironic. Plath depicts heaven as a distant, almost inaccessible realm, attainable only through a shift in perspective—one that she herself cannot achieve. The poem thus becomes an anti-heaven: natural imagery twisted with scorn and apathy. In this bleak landscape, even “nothing” becomes a form of revelation, capable of altering both the environment, and those who encounter it.

The words “pray” and “heaven,” paired with “beauty” and “love,” open up a realm rich with mystery and connotation, often inviting numerous interpretations and debates over what they strive to illuminate. Traditionally, prayer is a solemn act of supplication, a means of reaching out to a deity and striving toward higher ideals, desires, and purposes. In “Eagle Poem,” Harjo prays for our actions to be imbued with beauty, much like an eagle soaring through a blue sky, its circular flight embodying the divine through timeless motion. The poem calls for us to “take the utmost care / And kindness in all things,” grounding our higher aspirations in the graceful movement of the eagle. In this context, the deity is not an abstract God, but the eagle itself, its flight an incarnation of the divine, while our higher aims are made tangible through its graceful motion.

On the other hand, “Blackberrying” employs the concept of “heaven” cynically, allowing only the flies—creatures feasting on sweetness and blood—to believe in it. For Plath, “heaven” is a distant, unattainable ideal, inaccessible to those who, like the flies, indulge in base desires. As the speaker descends down the mountain, toward the beating of the harsh, “intractable metal,” the journey becomes a descent into anti-heaven––a plunge into hell, into the subterranean haunts of everyday life. Yet the poem still references the green meadows, too pure and sweet to grasp the speaker’s harsh, salty fall. In doing so, the poem retains a vestige of access to heaven, even if only as a distant, incomprehensible ideal.

Before modernism, the natural world served as a vivid depiction of heaven, providing the foundation for much of pre-modern poetry, particularly the work of Romantic poets like Blake and Wordsworth. Nature, teeming with a life force that neither fully materializes nor embodies itself, becoming the ideal domain for the poet seeking to understand the divine. Foliage, fauna, and flora took on symbolic roles as embodiments of beauty, untarnished and enduring. As mentioned earlier, “Eagle Poem” begins with the invocation of the four natural elements, calling upon the wholeness of the voice “that is you.” These elements sustain the eagle’s flight, which, as noted, symbolizes the deity to which the poem prays. In contrast, “Blackberrying” juxtaposes images of “ebon” berries and gluttonous flies, green meadows and clanging oceans, weaving a tension between materialism and spirit. Plath navigates this divide through the poem’s descending imagery, pulling us into a landscape where both the physical and the spiritual coexist uneasily.

Both poems use nature to anchor us in the material world, offering familiar, concrete images like the eagle or the blackberry. Yet these images are elevated into a realm of mystery, prompting the attentive reader to question their deeper meanings and significance. This act of questioning is essential to any poem worth its salt, as it reflects our innately human capacity to wonder, to explore, and to interpret the world around us. It speaks to our unique ability to craft thoughts and weave answers from our experiences. By linking the natural world to this process of inquiry, both poets affirm that poetry, in its essence, can be called “non-secular.” It necessitates a circular motion of thought, leading, as we see in both poems, to a sense of awe and wonder.

In his “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake writes: “A Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage / A Dove house fill’d with Doves & Pigeons / Shudders Hell thr' all its regions.” These lines exemplify how the heaven-hell dichotomy permeates the natural world, inviting readers to experience both realms through simple observation of nature. Blake imbues birds with the power to stir both divine wrath and infernal trembling, their movements acting as conduits between heaven and hell. Similarly, Joy Harjo’s eagle reaches into our minds, invoking prayer that connects human life with nature, weaving us into a sense of completeness. Sylvia Plath’s tumultuous ocean and cacophonous birds would no doubt “shudder hell through all its regions,” much like Blake’s birds. Poetry, as an art form, serves as an organ of the extraordinary, inviting readers into realms beyond the tangible, sensory world we inhabit daily. Words in poems, like Blake’s birds or Plath’s imagery, are not meant to be literally seen but imagined, and in this act of imagination, poetry reveals the supersensible. This is the profound power of poetry: it operates beyond the confines of religion or spiritual dogma, living instead in the realm of imagination, which itself is “extramundane.” To pray, one must “open our whole self”; to read poetry, we must do the same.

If reading poetry is an act of completion––a bridge between self and other, self and world, self and nature––then both Plath’s “Blackberrying” and Harjo’s “Eagle Poem” occupy the same sphere. Though distinct in style and tone, these poems share a common goal: to reveal what lies beyond the physical, sense-perceptible world. In this sense, they are pursuing the same end. But what exactly do they accomplish? The essay has already highlighted the significance of words like “pray” and “heaven,” as well as their compatibility with nature. From this, we can deduce that both poems allow the natural world to exemplify the divine––or, at the very least, to point toward a realm beyond materialism (the “blue-red juices” of the berries) and into the luminous, “lit from within” expanses of the spirit. However, these poems do not achieve this transcendence easily. Plath, for example, places numerous obstacles between the reader and heaven––terms like “nothing” and “protesting”––forcing us to pound against “intractable metal” in our attempt to glimpse something beyond the weight of these barriers. Harjo, on the other hand, lifts us into prayer by leaving open the possibility that our motions may not always be graceful or beautiful, but still hold meaning. It is through these challenges that both poems ascend into the canon of poetry, sparking our thoughts and stoking them into billowing flames.

This essay does not suggest that poetry is inherently non-secular. In fact, contemporary poetry often strives toward secularity. However, I do argue that timeless poetry––poetry that joins the canon of great works––always engages with the “non-secular.” Every great poem points toward the suprasensible: Blake’s “heaven in a wildflower,” Frost’s “woods’ excitement over you,” Whitman’s “vast similitude,” or Langston Hughes’ “dream dust.” Each reader’s experience of the suprasensible is deeply subjective, which is part of what makes poetry such a powerful medium. Even James Joyce’s Ulysses, a work that frequently reads like poetry, pushes against the boundaries of rigid form, forging new ways of presenting a story’s content. At every turn, great writers reach for the “non-secular.” To understand why this is, we return to Plath and Harjo and determine why they wrote “Eagle Poem” and “Blackberrying.” We must ask, why does Harjo and explore the motivations behind “Eagle Poem” and “Blackberrying.” Why does Harjo feel compelled to instruct us on how to pray and urge us to pray for beauty? Why does Plath lead us through hooks to pewter lights and the pounding of silversmiths against intractable metals? Both poets, it seems, are attempting to reveal something that lies between the lines—something suprasensible—to the reader.

Poetry has the power to cultivate moments of awe and epiphany within the human mind. “Eagle Poem” and “Blackberrying” transcend the sense-perceptible world by introducing mystery and inviting us to question what makes the natural world so alive––so beautiful. Our minds travel through a metaphorical mountainous landscape, descending to a figurative ocean, where we clash with the cacophony of choughs. We journey upward into metaphorical heights, forming “true circles of motion” and joining the archetypical eagle. In doing so, we leave behind the familiar confines of couches, chairs, and benches—those objects that seat us in the material world—for another world altogether: the realm of the suprasensible. Through reading great poetry, we strengthen our organs of perception, training ourselves to perceive what lies beyond the tangible, and striving to sense the suprasensible.

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.