And
it seems to me
that life, this brief life,
is nothing other than this:
the incessant cry of these emotions
that drive us, that we sometimes attempt
to channel in the name of a god, a political faith,
in a ritual that reassures us that, fundamentally,
everything is in order, in a great and boundless
love — and the cry is beautiful. Sometimes
it is a cry of pain. Sometimes
it is a song.
And song,
as Augustine observed,
is the awareness of time. It is time.
It is the hymn of the Vedas that is itself the
flowering of time. In the Benedictus of Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis, the song of the violin is pure
beauty, pure desperation, pure joy. We are
suspended, holding our breath, feeling
mysteriously that this must be source
of meaning. That this is the
source of time.
Then the
song fades and ceases.
“The silver thread is broken,
the golden bowl is shattered, the amphora
at fountain breaks, the bucket falls into the well,
the earth returns to dust.” And it is fine like
this. We can close our eyes, rest. This all
seems fair and beautiful to me.
This is time.
