Nascence in Exordium

O, may the moon and sunlight seem /One inextricable beam /For if I triumph, I must make men mad

The Tower, W.B Yeats

Isn’t it something, my dear, to suffer in victory and who am I to say what is beholden in your eyes? Lay your hands upon my face and know what it means to grieve. The Otherworld is vast, but our hearts are vaster, still, like something out of stories, like something Brogdingnagian; impossible and wonderful, radiant and aflame.

So the Gods say, ‘What will you do?’

And we say, ‘what we must’,

when we really mean, ‘what our hearts require of us, for we are ruled by them more than we are ruled by You’,

and some of us add, ‘I beg, I beg for help, for love, for guidance, for comfort, for everything and all’,

and fewer, still, whisper, ‘take from me this life, for I cannot be trusted with it in my small, fragile hands.’

But our lives and our hearts are given to us without pity, without mercy, without permission; as though we had sinned in some world Before and this is retribution come to lay judgment upon our heads and witness our bloody tears.

Life is nothing but a slow descent, my dear, a grasping at the mud in the messy slide ever downwards, so how can it be anything but punishment? But then we pass another and see a life ablaze in glory and find ourselves with our hands in the trees and our feet in the water; clean, holy, alive. For a moment we remember what it means to have roots.

The folly of us is to wilt as we wait, stuck fast in river or mud - escape, if you can, from this cycle of fire and ash and dirt. But, oh, take me with you; clasp my hand in yours and pull me along, away, above, beyond our feeble lives

And the stars say, 'what do you want?'

And we say, 'everything we can grasp in our desperate hands and more,'

When we really mean, 'we’re so hungry for something else, something we don’t have and can never achieve,'

And some of us add, 'can you see what we need, way up there in the sky? Can you tell us where to go?'

And fewer, still, whisper, 'come down to meet us and know what it is to die.'

So the stars fell to earth in a crash like thunder, plunging into the ocean deep and washing up and out to make the beaches; tread carefully on these old, dead remnants of cosmos. They sacrificed it all to understand something that has no answer. They learned nothing and taught nothing but to fall and that to fall means to end. And so we fall, willingly, desperately, and discover that the stars are wrong. We fall and nothing ends, not really, because we are not stars and it is folly to compare ourselves to such burning light.

But compare we must, for what else shall we compare ourselves to but something that is out of reach, always and always out of reach. We don’t understand the stars and the stars don’t understand us, for we are made of sand and soil and clay.

And the earth says, 'what do you want?'

And we say, 'you, we will own you for ourselves, so that at least we have something that is ours,'

When we really mean, 'why do you push back against our greedy hands, we need to feel real, to feel alive, to feel like we can make something good,'

And some of us add, 'we need the dirt under our nails and beneath our feet, we need to feel the life that beats in the core of this world,'

And fewer, still, whisper, 'for god’s sake, take us back, we were an error in the scheme of things and there is nothing to be done but start over.'

The earth grants us everything, but eternity and the rest we need and so we rage, grief stricken beyond what our souls can take, terribly afire, yet already nothing but ash made sentient. Hold fast, my dear, hold fast in our cosmic oversight. Hold fast in the faults of our creation. Hold fast, for it will soon be over and we will turn from ash to light.