The final two sections of this work have waited a long time to emerge. The exploration of the angelic spheres simply needed arranging, but the final section on the Highest Sphere, I had no idea how to proceed with, until one recent morning, the words flew out of themselves.
—
Causatum primum esse creatum primum pricipium omnium creaturarum continens in se creaturas. ( First effect, first created being, pricipal of all creatures, containing all creatures within itself)
It has been months now,
Perhaps years, perhaps lifetimes,
Wandering, flying north, reaching upwards.
Lost and dreaming in the folds of space.
Without affirmation, without calibration,
Lost in uncertain geometries,
Torn by laws of motion
And too certain theologies.
Beyond the rational, beyond the poetic,
A mind running regardless,
Generating language, souls and wings.
Materia in potentia (passive receptacle)
Forma in potentia (Pure Act)
Here in the thin silences
Every river has become
Clear white and single streams,
The seven rivers ceased.
Now, a simple irrigation of sound.
A First Cause, before it takes sides,
Turns demons cloaked in thunder
And dark collateral engines of despair,
Innocent and mirroring the forceful
Wells within us, deeper than bone.
Creator omnium Deus -Causa Prima – Voluntas divina – voluntas divina. ( The Creator of All, God, the First Cause, The Divine Will, The Divine Will)
There is nothing grand about the First.
Nothing magnificent, nothing golden.
The smallest shudder, an imperceptible stretch
Before any decision to inflate,
Any smudge of granulation,
Any furrow of rotation.
An indeterminate number of souls –
All the ghosts of past and future –
Holding back, though longing
To explode within:
The only fuel, the only food, the only song.
The geometers approach, but tangle their measures.
The geomancers learn the dance, weigh the odds.
The elders nod and drool.
The angels consume themselves eternally
In flaming passion, revolving.
Only the weeds in the meadow give utterance to it,
And that so sublime, it makes less sense
Than the grasshopper’s click
And geiger song of cicadas.
Doppler shift.
It forms on disappearance,
It shapes and sings with distance.
A flaming torch falling,
A roar through shaped voids.
Cast out, returned, circumferential, pointless.
All the words have emptied out,
And yet more form and flow –
An endless road,
A glistening heaven
Made of rock,
A mistaken sky.
“Only the weeds in the meadow…and geiger sound of cicadas….sings with distance.” And, your last stanza. Resonant language, Simon.
Thanks, Bonnie!