Poems by Themis

Night and Unknowing

Night and unknowing:

first, the ignorance with its trooping, tripping joys,

small joys that gleam a promise of bliss and perish,

and much ignorant suffering — pain without meaning,

pain fruitless, the pain of matter, — futility. ...

And then frustration and unknowing yet meaninged pain,

lamentations and a quiet mourning of the spirit

for things unrealised,

pain of bewilderment, then a pain of promise,

but deeper yet

for the unconsciousness of spirit,

its faint lights and rights, its sleep, its numbness;

dark sorrow in the night, night out in the forest,

with snake-bite and prowling murder

and fear that kills;

trapping cruelties and unaware overtakings of the animal;

night in the gutters, with creatures of the slime,

with dirt, disease and sin,

night in the soul's home —

impotencies willed and unwilled....

And the endless silent weeping, the endless groping

in the night and unknowing.

And then the hint of dawn.

And yet unknowing. ...

Only a glow of promise behind the soul's pain,

a red joy-glimmer... and yet pain:

the pain of beauty and transient light,

of the soul's lack for the opening of purity,

of the unremoved screenings, uncleaned windows

and mirror;

the pain of beauty refracted, warped and passing,

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the pain of light dirt-sifted, dirt-reflected,

and, at last, the most bitter grief

of the soul's understanding

of its own slow annihilation.

And then the pause at the edge of dawn,

at the slow turning of the night into morning,

the slow returning of light.

The pause and return:

the golden knowledge and white new pureness,

the death of uncleannesses on the stagnant waters,

drying of weeds and rotten mosses, dying of death. ...

Infiltration of sunlight, translucencies,

loveliness of ray-dances in the open fields,

the forest-beast's retirement, the waking of man,

freshness and health and eternal radiance,

the beatitude of the new day.

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