[ éphémère ]
The chilling irresolution
of once here, forever gone
The blinding juxtaposition of fleeting breath
And the permanence of each end
Just a flicker and then we go.
Our stories have been written, and here will not be another word more.
Complete.
But incomplete, always, something wanting,
Something unfulfilled, unattended,
That impatient hourglass
Life in a loose grip
Grain by grain,
Exhaling, expiring.
The finality of never again
Which we sometimes hasten
And sometimes, fruitlessly, attempt to hold:
“This is good,” we say: “let me pause here awhile.”
It is only in the hastening that God abides.
And I wonder how much of the beauty is inextricable from its own impermanence, and is nothing outside of it. Is it all?
Do you dare to take that chance?
What is the shade of your collection of moments?
What do you know that you don’t know,
And wouldn’t you like to?
Consider the mayfly: mourn the brevity of its flight
Before you declare to the night
that it has won
theme and variations 