Point Omega -- Heart of Pestilence

I once opened a great big book called "Understanding Poetry", published at the University of Odense. It must have weighed about 10 pounds. All I read was a few lines in the introduction, but they blew my mind.

I forget what I actually read but I was left with an understanding that poetry is nothing more or less than life as expressed in human experience, that is, everything we say is poetry, just not very good or, if you prefer, kind of watered down.

The first human speech was not the caveman grunts of the popular imagination.

The first human speech was poetry and song.

When Adam and Eve spoke the leaves on the trees whispered their answer and a song echoed from the clear crystal fountain.

When you find yourself understanding poetry, it is because the heart and are beginning to work together. Poetry is a product of intellect and feeling being, for a moment usually, in harmony.

10. Heart of Pestilence


To cross, on naked feet, a sea of broken glass,
of shifting shards, would be a simple task
compared to stopping the Moon in her path
or keeping the future from becoming past.

There is an immutability in All-That-Is
which the seer sees as a vast emptiness,
wider even than the jaws of death
or the mouth of hell.

I swear: in every human breath

there is a door which opens like a flower
and in its opening bears a power
greater than any thing in time or space...

It's not a question of belief or even faith!

No mental concept can contain What-Is
Or drive the ashen stake into the pestilence.

___________
I wonder why I chose the picture above when the title today is "Heart of Pestilence"?

The glib answer is that I couldn't find a gif anywhere which suited.

On the other hand, there are two themes here, that of Reality as represented by What-Is and the counter theme of pestilence which we met at the very beginning of the Point Omega series.

In tommorow's post we run with this "ashen stake" image and develop it into a kind of vampire slaying. However, in my thinking when the stake is driven into the heart the beast doesn't go "poof" into a cloud of dust like in "Buffy". Rather, it is transmuted into its real nature, like frog kissed or the image of the demon lizard in "The Great Divorce" which becomes a magnificient roan stallion.

That may be a good explanation or maybe just bullshit on my part -- take your pick!