".... sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt ...."
- Virgil: Aeneid
here
in this strange quiet place
alone together
at home in a far continent
with old friends
newly met for the first time
we touch
sometimes (for the first time)
those first familiar tears
wearisome themselves unwearied
Isis in search
of some unknown foreshadowed
Osirian unity
- how hard it is
- in these distracted times
- to find a brother!
sometimes it seems
that all we feel
or write
is a tissue of immutable
half remembered quotations
from past experience
or common culture
- how can it be
- this alchemy
- of souls foregathered
- to carry forward
- in a hundred delicate encounters
- many lives?
- and for me
- to rattle the cages in the night
- and release
- the mass, the sensual vitality
- of tiger and crocodile ....
10th August 1988
.... The Virgil is beyond translation: however -
"There are tears (in the nature of) things, and human sorrows
(transience, mortality ....) touch the heart" ....
also
- ".... a human enters into being
in an encounter with other human beings
and in no other way ...."