Literature, Prose, Poetry and Thought, Page 1
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An Exchange

the city

you say:

'I will go to another land, another sea
another city better than this
I have tried, I have failed
I am condemned, written off
my heart is a lump, dead and buried
must I stay in this...death?
I look about me, see
black ruin...wasted years'

listen:

'for you there are no new places, new seas
The city is within you, you take it with you
you are the city
in its houses, streets
among such neighbours
you will always be, grow old, grey
this is your city
you cannot escape
for you there is no road out
no ship to another land
go as you will
you will always reach again this city'

— Gerrard Casey

© Estate of Frithjof Schuon
c/o World Wisdom Books
P.O. Box 2682 Bloomington IN 47402

Withdraw into yourself and look.
 And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet,
 act as does the creator of a statue
 that is to be made beautiful; he cuts away here,
 he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter,
 this other purer, until a lovely face has grown
 upon his work. So do you also: 
cut away all that is excessive,
 straighten all that is crooked,
 bring light to all that is overcast,
 labour to make all one glow of beauty
 and never cease chiseling your statue,
 until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike
 splendour of virtue, until you shall see
 the perfect goodness surely established in the
 stainless shrine.

—Plotinus

Our general instinct to seek and learn, our longing to possess ourselves of whatsoever is lovely in the vision, will set us enquiring into the nature of the instrument with which we search. Moreover, we shall only be obeying the ordinance of the God who bade us know ourselves.

beyond stone images

no—we did not know them
it must have been hope that whispered
'we have known them since we were children'

they went off in ships
with cargoes of coal, of grain
we saw them perhaps twice...then
they were lost beyond the ocean
we never saw them again

now, by the tired light in the mornings
on sheets of paper we try to draw
clumsily, wearily
ships, mermaids, shells

in the evening dusk
we go down to the river
it flows to the sea
we pass the nights in cellars
breathing in the smell of tar

they have left us
did we ever see them?
perhaps only in a dream
when sleep brought us to the edge
of the heaving wave

perhaps in seeking them
we seek another life

beyond the stone images

— Gerrard Casey