[“Crossroads,” by Hungarian artist István Orosz. For more about this image, see the Note at the bottom of this post.]
From whiskey river:
A Note
Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;to be a dog
or stroke its warm fur;to tell pain
from everything it’s not;to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;and to keep on not knowing
something important.
(Wislawa Szymborska [source])
…and:
I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality, and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.
(Marilynne Robinson, Gilead [source])
