In my copy of J. M. Cohen's translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essays
Cohen wrote in the introduction: "Montaigne accepted a double truth; the sphere of faith and the sphere of reason were to him entirely separate."

If I were to describe my own double truth, of reason and faith,
I think my sphere of faith is surely placed within the sphere of reason.


Like a torus of Reason and Faith:
Though I can rationally navigate my way to reach the membrane of my faith
What is truly hidden within is still ever beyond reason.

Perhaps through this relentless search of truth, and the piercing gravity of love,
I can one day breach and reach
The nucleus of this ring or Circle
That is Perfectly spaceless
And
Timeless

Verse:

Lofty darkness
Specks of obscured suns
Drooping light
Columns of lucid stars

Desert waves
I cannot tell if they are mountains
Or oceans
Desolate woodlands
We suffocate in the verdant and then
We’re forgotten

Chorus:

The desperation of the lost
Is not the emptiness of the barren
But unable to be found among the crowd
Obscurantist songs are rarely fully sung
For it may be above all, but none can reach
And none can teach
An incomprehensible truth
Is shapelessly hopeless
Is shapelessly hopeless  
Is shapelessly hopeless  

Bridge:

Like a pied enchanter, veiled and barely seen
With confidence unchallenged, he gestures deceit
As if waving alms of miracles so easily gained
Under dark carnival tents, quietly anticipating
The wonder of dazzling illusion, so fearfully arcane
The spectators kneel and bow to the ‘forged’ king

Verse:

Field of barley
Glares with gold utilitarianly  
River of humility
Ever ready to fulfill all thirst and needs

Stars faint and hazy
Only the clearest is used for guiding
Sunlight warm and cozy
Never bares itself for the elite only

Chorus:

The desperation of the lost
Is not the emptiness of the barren
But unable to be found among the crowd
Obscurantist songs are rarely fully sung
For it may be above all, but none can reach
And none can teach
And incomprehensible truth
Is shapelessly hopeless
Is shapelessly hopeless  
Is shapelessly hopeless  

Bridge:

Like a pied enchanter, veiled and barely seen
With confidence unchallenged, he gestures deceit
As if waving alms of miracles so easily gained
Under dark carnival tents, quietly anticipating
The wonder of dazzling illusion, so fearfully arcane
The spectators kneel and bow to the ‘forged’ king

CODA:

I’d rather be the ragged elder of solitary certainty
With sifts of wisdom and time, real grains filtering
Under the pure blue sky, the orange field gleaming
Watch over these substances over form fermenting
Would you rather have too much sugar till aching
Or let spirits pure send you to more pleasant dreams

I am a soul of fragments,
Of the minuscule,
Of the details.
I want to be a great sea of ceaseless poetry,
But always focus on the small, the unnecessary.

I am touched by every soul,
And they live on through me,
Sometimes it's not just me, but
We are all afraid of seeing other's words
Other's mark on us,
But we must embrace freely
The past and the contemporary,
Just as we can't all reinvent LANGUAGES independently,  
We can't have souls that rather be silent
Than to create.

I am merely the temporary vessel
Taking whatever is exterior to me
In the river of all the creations
Letting them combine
And
Flow together freely
And pour them back out again
Back into Creation.
Back into the great water of poetry,
Waiting to be fearlessly
Borne
Into another wave.

I

Men must slumber in the darkness
In order to be truly awaken
Men must be desperately lost
In order to look up at the endless stars

The young love to sing about death
While the old worship life like the sun
The young are hopeless on earth, dreaming of flight
The old fear to be parted from the land without a raging fight

II

Who wants to be from War and Peace
The Fly against the loft sky
But we are all just flies
Traceless, each life in a dream it lies
Always to be awakened, bringing nothing and taking nothing
Why must we seek truth in a dream?
If we will forget them when we finally open our eyes
With joy, with sorrow
We witness death
Just so we would strive to stay alive
But why are we alive?
To prepare us for what?

III


Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive

I

Life is the only route
Between nothingness and the endless
Our birth on earth, and our perishing to dirt
Are both equal ends for the existing

And fools will simply rejoice in the illusive brevity
While sages prepare for the everlasting dance
And fools will take comfort in the darkness obscuring his sins
While sages prepare for the brilliance of the yonder light  
By already shining and basking in this life

II

I want to be from War and Peace
The Bee of such trivial and insignificant life
For we are all just bees
Unnoticed, but must exist
Why were we ever born to fly,
When true height is beyond this life?
Just for the pollen and nectar, taken and given?
Till bees return to the impermanent or the forever?
We will regret their absence then, bitterly and barrenly
Witnessing loss, just to learn to cherish
The existing.
But we exist, for what?

III

Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive

Conclusion:

Being alive
Is not just so we can die
That is completely meaningless
Being alive,
Is the only route
From nothingness to endlessness

Only having been once alive
Can you be resurrected
Only when you walk this road to the end
Will you find and continue the pave to the
Neverending Land

‘The Problem to be explored: The Problem of Abundance:’


Nothing lasts anymore, nothing seems meaningful anymore, nothing feels wanted anymore,

Except for the already lost and gone, and can’t be retrieved.

It seems everything is given without being asked for.

You’ll only notice something when it's not there:


Perhaps:


“My cup must be empty once again in order to receive.”


I have suddenly forgotten where I have just heard

This being said in a prayer but I think it is the key, the answer

To the needless and senseless suffering of our herd

But, its truth stuck with me, and I too wonder


I too think I must be silent again to allow the singing once more

I too think I must become the void to welcome the replenishing wave

Of excitement

Of the need to climb while weighed down by life’s

Various impossibilities, and mystery

And not float thus, away

Fallen to the what Milan Kundera

Described perfectly in his title:

“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”


Our cup runneth over, and we are left to wander

With the grains of time, and consciousness

Escaping through our desperate fingers

As we rush towards a mirage of permanence

While scorching our feet on the sand and deserts  

Burnt by an ever more present sun

And the tedium of golden overabundance


Ancient wisdom dictates that:


“What is useful is not the cup,

But the void that’s ready to receive

The already full need no more

And its further worth deceives”


“Reunion of too long must not last

Separation is inevitable

Separation will always be short-lived

Reunion is unavoidable”


Now, that’s some wisdom to heed

The Union of Lovers will need




‘The Problem of Too Much Goodness’




We are always questioning the Problem of Evil

While too few words lend to the Terror of Good


Everything is living longer and longer

Yet

Everything is dying quicker and quicker


It really is “the best of times”

It really is “the worst of times”

While

Our flesh savours a never before longevity

Our soul is aging rapidly at an alarming rate


This is A Tale of Two Realities:


Where Time is both a child

With an almost non-existent attention span

And the world its vast endless sandbox

A toy is too quickly loved and so immediately

Discarded

Where Time is also senile

With an almost non-existent memory reserve

With the ancient past constantly retold in nostalgia

And the immediate events of rapid currents

Dissipated


There are still so much hunger and terror in

The modern world

Of course, the well-fed, warless, and unmarked

are being overlooked


But there is a hidden, yet imminent gloom

A spectre hanging above the peaceful and full:




‘The Problem of the Need to be Desired’




We are beings made with one innate desire

To climb, to reach a height ever higher

And one day

Above all


Throughout history,

There has always been way too much

Obstacles

For the mass to reach the summit

And now,

It seems that the summit itself is built

By a stack of the masses

So many of us are great

That none of us is great

Therefore, so quickly forgotten

And replaced by others in

Time


Speaking of time,

Or rather, our conscious

Awareness of change

It seems to be overused,

Weary and

DYING

As a dying old man in mind

Resembles a stubborn child

Our Collective Temporal Consciousness

Is thus

So forgetful like a senile being

And

Losing interest so quickly like an infant


Our cup, our mind is so full

That not only our flesh has become

That of gluttons complaining the

Blandness of an abundance of food

Our soul is also yearning for the

Quiet performance and desirability

Only a lack of supply could supply


So, in effect, GOODNESS

Or WELLNESS

Have somehow oversupplied

Itself till

It is almost worthless to

Some



What is there to reach

If so many have already found

The Summit of Everything?

That we are among the masses

Again?

And, what about those that have

Risen above THE MASS

So early in their life

That to them, there is only space

To fall?


In the past,

We were all so close to the pit

The Pit of Darkness

The Pit of Death

In our climb

That we hold on to every branch

For dear life

No matter how many stones

Fall on us

We look down upon the void

And the black

Abyss

And will always

Sink our nails deeper

Into the earth

Just to stay alive

And still,

To no avail

So quickly,

We all fall

To pitied, and

Dearly treasured and mourned

Demise


And,

Now,

For the hurt

And the healed

And the unmarked

Life marches on mercilessly

Indifferent to us

The bodies crawling and crouching

Upon the desert of abundance

Row upon row

Chased by the sandstorm

That will soon catch up to us

And sweep over all


Where will it take us,

And what before then?


What would cure and stop

This perpetual climb that will

Always place those on top

At the bottom of this crushing hill




The Possible Solutions:




‘How will we quench the thirst of Height?’


We did not witness THE BIRTH OF TIME

We cannot halt THE AGING OF TIME

We cannot know what comes after

THE DEATH OF TIME

But we desperately need a constant climb


Here, we see the Gates to Two Routes


One leading towards the Tangible

Garden of Men

One leading towards the Unseeable

Temple of Worship


There is no right or wrong way to either

However, how you spend your time

Within each

Will determine your plight during  

The time before the True Flight


Pace yourself in your walk through

The Garden of Men

Though there is an abundance of fruits

You must calculate and ration

Your own sustainable share of

Good and Evil

Enjoyment and Suffering

So you don’t exhaust the reserve

Or become weary till nausea

Of the sweetness of being


If you must seek to rise up above all

Your climb must be timed till the very end

Where you will never be crushed by the fall

On the Rota Fortunae, before you inevitably land


The Supply and Demand of Good and Evil

Must be balanced even if by the hands of men

Lest the world turn to well-rested upheaval

When even gold is as abundant as sand


Then, there is the Pave to the Promised Land

Where lost souls of ****** hunger find

Their means to an end, their helping hand

Where fulfilled bodies of lost souls and minds

Pleads to have their invisible suffering end


I used to think that Grace lives in humility

But I see even the Truth appeals to the nature,

Foolish frailty and vanity of all women and men

How do you tell the beings of imminent demises

That this earthly supply and demand of status

Is worthless in the end in a paradise without ends

Where there is no fall for a fear to plummet and land

But to say the weakest of earth

Must be the strongest of heavens

The least of the timely and impermanent possessions

Will be the most in the place after the ultimate ascension


Not to imprison our desire for greatness

But to set it free and follow the lofty dove and olive branch

Knowing that the great height is achieved by humility

To take the fall and suffering and rise in the Eternal Land




Conclusion:




The painful truth is,

And truth must hurt through the bones,

And ache seasonally to not be forgotten

There must be a Supply and Demand of Good and Evil

By our humble minds or divine hands

For honesty to be wanted, and prized

And not worthless like the ocean sand

Lest we become weary of virtue and crave for its end


There are solutions for all,

For those who put faith in life

And

For those who put faith in an afterlife


Simply, though,

It is ever difficult

Just to pace your climb

Either to reach the summit at the end of your life

Or just to leave the height to the ever lofty place without time.

Where you’ll never fall to a late demise

And be crushed by the Rota Fortunae

Where even the stars would envy

The brilliance of your

Light

A Montage of Homages:


I’m ever the devoted fool
Trusting dreams as love
I’m ever the stubborn child
Never repenting enough

I’m the lone wanderer of Nevsky Prospect
Trivial like the gadfly against the lofty sky
Overlooked as a dusty tattered Overcoat
Crushed like an ant beneath the Bronze Horseman

When the bright lingers beyond dusk
When the dark, at dawn, hesitant to depart
Am I ever awake through all of time
Or am I to sleep all white days and nights

All I am certain is, that
Only in dreams can we reunite
All I know is, that this
Is the Dreamer’s sole purpose of life




The Saint Petersburg Dreamer
Long for a love beyond common strive
Yet, only exists to slumber through life
To finally awake when the night is nigh

Upon the earth, he’s a mere dust
When the tide arrives, all will be lost

The Saint Petersburg Dreamer
You mustn't have noticed he’s still there
Upon each and every torn overcoat
Every patch resewn: his dreams and love