#fromhelsinki

  9.8-10  | 

9.11-12  | 

I found the building in the site.  I knew that the Earth would split to accommodate it.

Author, process review, 24.7.2012

I will create an awareness of the mythology of perception.  Man defines himself through the search for the nature of existence, the relentless pursuit of a hidden Truth that governs our lives.  It's a motive at the heart of every supplicant and every empiricist.  It's the human condition.  We suspect that the shapes on the wall are merely cast shadows:  The design makes every human a philosopher.  "Across distant time and place," Man has always searched for a higher order of existence, because we intuit that there must be more to the world than that which is presented by our senses.

So I searched the ground for something I could use to prop open the flap so that when at last he overcame his fear, he could timidly escape his prison. I found a moldy black hoodie stuffed beneath the green bench under the plexiglass bus stop and wedged that between the trash can's edge and the bottom of the flap, inviting him to liberate himself.  I watched the trash can until the bus came a few minutes later, but he didn't venture out; I'm sure he was still positive that I was waiting just outside to gobble him up.

  I.

  Out of Eden strides the man,

Steward of the Earth,

Sure of nothing but his own will,

Yet doomed never to know himself;

  Forges onward; forges forth;

Spreads across the world

In pursuit of the elusive

Lonely precipice named Truth.

  Across distant time and place,

Man’s fate ever is this:

To believe himself alone

And thrash in loneliness;

  To enter a copse of trees

Shadowed by his might;

To sense in that glowing place

Eternity in the light;

      Yet shout out to the Heavens

And be deaf to the reply.

      II.

  wood

         brother of fire

         brother of iron

quickens the veins of the silent

birches

  thus betrayed by

blood

witnesses they

watch the desecration of

their kind

  transfixed they

observe their transformation from

living kin

into sere objects of the human

hand

  protectors they

sentinels they

gather close that which

is most dear

  in the copse

beside the creeping

corpse

  where grow the exultant

wildflowers

  best-loved sanctuary of dust

motes

steeped in yellow

      green

      III.

  living in the lee of a precarious

stone

  always they ask:

      who are we tomorrow?