Meditation Two

Style is the perfection of a point of view, Nowise absolute, but held in a balance of opposites So that for a moment the passage of time is stopped And man is enhanced in a height of harmony. He has purchased at a great price the gems of elan In some avid precinct of his personality, The price of years of doubt and belief, of suffering The enigmas of the day, every hardy opposition Of opinion, and every gain of hard-constructed good. Music of furor, or insights passive and sovereign When the clearest dreams are in a half-lit wakefulness, When the best love is untutored, able to be blessed. It is the style of the mariner proud on his vessel, Who keeps a weather eye to the storm, but hopes, Aware of the improbable, weather will not alter From gentle zephyrs allowing him the spectacle of July As if the afternoon were perfect and endless, Porpoises in pairs follow the ship, and seals

Poke up their hopeful heads to see what trespasses. The lobsterman is still at pulling his traps, And far off the race jockeys on its summer errands, Lightly touched with an ethereal evanescence, Before returning to the home clubhouse and yacht club, Inevitably pulling down the small sails at nightfall. So should reality seem to be a style Consummate and faultless, held in the hand As the tooled wheel before the magnetic compass, And all should be orderly in earth as in heaven. But that we know the gale will rive us, Years cut down our vanities, time unseam us, Force throw the weak baby seal to death On the rocks, the unexpected shock sink the vessel, Or worse, to see the oncoming rollers and savage tempest And know our doom forced against any wood or canvas, Where is the style then for man the master of earth And of waters, man who thinks to control his life And to roam through the black new wastes of space As if he had comfort in his small, cramping capsule? Is there an outer misadventure or foul catastrophe So malign as the malevolent sunderings of the soul?

For down in the depths of the heart's adventure The evil in man since the loss of Paradise And that knowledge which came in the Garden of Eden When Eve offered man the fruit of the womb and of life Has taken every stride with his heavenward hope And locked his going in his ever knowing dualism, So that from the opposites of good and evil, flesh and spirit, Damnation and redemption, he is never absent But truly is fixed in a vise of these opposites Contending manly, forcing his sperm on children, Unable not to start the chain of being again, Crying out again and again when he sees suffering.

Is it not a provocation of the spirit of unity, That, despite the ramifications of disparate phenomena, Man seizes immortality on the instant And can make his watery flesh seem permanent In the magical power of a given poem, In the working of paint, in the modelling of stone, In the flash and controlled passion of music, Is not the style of the man caught in his art, And is art itself not a triumph of nature, Before the worm takes over, before the breakneck tomb?

I sing the harmony of the instant of knowing When all things dual become a unity, The power of the mind to envisage singleness, The purpose of the hand to shape lovingness.

If I sing Aeschylean right-mindedness, It is of myself mostly that I sing, Hoping the improbable advent of unity Will triumph over the mocking dualisms Which, each seeming real, yearly tore me In the macerations of their blooded factions As, whether to fly out, and shout with the government, Or, silent as a crab, burrow in the sands of solitude; Whether to embark upon the waves of chance, Or reside in some closed nook of contemplation; Whether to accept the brotherhood of the many, Or live for the talents and the truths of the few.

So should style amplify and refine man's poise, Be an instrument as lucid as the best of his knowing.