world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom. The faces of the beasts show what truly IS to us: we who up-end the infant and force its sight to fix upon things and shapes, not the freedom that they occupy, that openess which lies so deep within the faces of the animals, free from death! We alone face death. The beast, death behind and God before, moves free through eternity like a river running. Never for one day do we turn from forms to face that place of endless purity blooming flowers forever know. Always a world for us, never the nowhere minus the no: that innocent, unguarded space which we could breathe, know endlessly, and never require. A child, at times, may lose himself within the stillness of it, until rudely ripped away. Or one dies and IS the place. As death draws near, one sees death no more, rather looks beyond it with, perhaps, the broader vision of the beasts. Lovers, serving only to obstruct one another's view of it, approach the place with awe... as if by accident, it appears to each behind that precise spot before which the other stands... neither can slip behind the other and so, again, the world returns. We behold creation's face as though reflected in a mirror misted with our breath. Sometimes a speechless beast lifts its docile head and looks right through us. This is destiny: to be opposites, always and only to face one another and nothing else.
Could that surefooted beast,
approaching from a direction different than our own, aquire the mental knack to think as do we, he would spin us round and drag us with him. But he is without end unto himself: devoid of comprehension, unselfscrutinized, pure as his outgoing glance. We see future; he sees eternal completion. Himself in all.
Even so, within the alert warmth
of that animal, the weight and care of one great sadness dwells. He is not exempt from an unclear memory-which subdues us as well: the notion that what we seek was once closer and truer by far than now... and infinitely tender. Here... distances unending. There... a gentle breathing. After that first home, this one seems windstruck and degenerate. O bliss of the diminutive: creature born from a particular womb into womb perpetual. O delight of the mite who leaps on, embryonic, though his wedding day impends! All is womb to him. But observe the lesser certainty of the birds who seem to know both circumstances, by very birthright, like some Etruscan soul rising from the cadaver of a sarcophagus sculpted with its tenant's face. Imagine the general bafflement of anything born of the womb and required to take flight! Frightened by its very self, it cuts the air with fractured arcs, jagged as bat tracks, cracking the porcelain sky of evening.
We are, above all, eternal spectators
looking upon, never from, the place itself. We are the essence of it. We construct it. It falls apart. We reconstruct it and fall apart ourselves.
Who formed us thus:
that always, despite our aspirations, we wave as though departing? Like one lingering to look, from a high final hill, out over the valley he intends to leave forever, we spend our lives saying goodbye.
The creature gazes into openness with all
its eyes. But our eyes are as if they were reversed, and surround it, everywhere, like barriers against its free passage. We know what is outside us from the animal’s face alone: since we already turn the young child round and make it look backwards at what is settled, not that openness that is so deep in the animal’s vision. Free from death. We alone see that: the free creature has its progress always behind it, and God before it, and when it moves, it moves in eternity, as streams do. We never have pure space in front of us, not for a single day, such as flowers open endlessly into. Always there is world, and never the Nowhere without the Not: the pure, unwatched-over, that one breathes and endlessly knows, without craving. As a child loses itself sometimes, one with the stillness, and is jolted back. Or someone dies and is it. Since near to death one no longer sees death, and stares ahead, perhaps with the large gaze of the creature. Lovers are close to it, in wonder, if the other were not always there closing off the view..... As if through an oversight it opens out behind the other......But there is no way past it, and it turns to world again. Always turned towards creation, we see only a mirroring of freedom dimmed by us. Or that an animal mutely, calmly is looking through and through us. This is what fate means: to be opposite, and to be that and nothing else, opposite, forever. If there was consciousness like ours in the sure creature, that moves towards us on a different track – it would drag us round in its wake. But its own being is boundless, unfathomable, and without a view of its condition, pure as its outward gaze. And where we see future it sees everything, and itself in everything, and is healed for ever. And yet in the warm waking creature is the care and burden of a great sadness. Since it too always has within it what often overwhelms us – a memory, as if what one is pursuing now was once nearer, truer, and joined to us with infinite tenderness. Here all is distance, there it was breath. Compared to that first home the second one seems ambiguous and uncertain. O bliss of little creatures that stay in the womb that carried them forever: O joy of the midge that can still leap within, even when it is wed: since womb is all. And see the half-assurance of the bird, almost aware of both from its inception, as if it were the soul of an Etruscan, born of a dead man in a space with his reclining figure as the lid. And how dismayed anything is that has to fly, and leave the womb. As if it were terrified of itself, zig-zagging through the air, as a crack runs through a cup. As the track of a bat rends the porcelain of evening. And we: onlookers, always, everywhere, always looking into, never out of, everything. It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We arrange it again, and collapse ourselves. Who has turned us round like this, so that, whatever we do, we always have the aspect of one who leaves? Just as they will turn, stop, linger, for one last time, on the last hill, that shows them all their valley - , so we live, and are always taking leave.