Browsing Tag

Monism

MICRO CHANGES - JAN/FEB 2019 Poetry Sybrand Veeger

Heraclitus and “I”

Written by Sybrand Veeger

To the skies he cried,

Nothing is but fire!

Observing thus that everything is change.

He knew that God-or-Nature had but one desire:

To stay in flux, to stay in flow, to re- and rearrange!

Nothing ever stands, for the cosmos eternally will dance:

Being’s moves are both random and necessary,

For the beat is chaotic yet perpetually voluntary.

One never steps into the same river twice,

Whispered our Greek identifying parallel streams:

The river flows and so do I,

Observing thus that “I” is something else than what it seems:

There is no meaningful, purposeful or essential “I,”

Or a “self” to be developed as a self-contained existence;

Rather life’s basic playfulness is unwise to deny!

If at every instant “I” returns as another

and as an other,

Self is a ceaseless repetition of different others to discover:

If this morphing game is a play of masks

Like an inwardly theatre with no future, with no past,

We should conclude that self’s a stream                                                                       or a perpetual come-and-go,

That there is no truthful state that will one day lead the show –

So?

Unfold all masks!

Release all fire!

Let us play!

Let us dance! – to the cosmic beat’s desire.