Meditations on doing nothing
Although I always want to do things—
Incredible things, unspeakable things,
Things terrible, noble, sublime, and godlike,
Things that could only be done
On the horizon of the end of the world;
Where all humanity would be condensed in a single action
For the glory and eternity of my spirit and my spirit alone,
This fanatical fire collapses under its own weight;
Consumed in liminal spaces, it goes nova in the realm of dreams,
Ultimately eclipsed by the pressing, unremitting mundane:
Everyday and Everyman.
And the conflagration is seen by the world only as a distant light,
A dim and dying ember: these words.
Then, with my head still warm,
I begin to think of the lilies of the fields:
“How they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin”,
And how the spinning is done entirely by the world itself
Without any eagerness or laid out plan,
But manifesting the implicate order.
And I think of the Way, and how everything is perfect,
A perfection that brings tears to my eyes
(There is ecstasy in understanding this,
And I'm ravished by this thought):
This world does not demand more fire
To bring about anything—it has enough
To create and destroy, freely, aggressively and joyously,
With no need of any flames breaking out,
In a beautiful, majestic and terrifying parade,
From the towering stone walls of my mind.
