In The Desert, An Old Monk Had

We Are One Of Many Appearances Of The Thing Called Life; We Are Not Its Perfect Image, For It Has No Perfect Image Except Life, And Life Is Multitudinous And Emergent In The Stream Of Time.

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

Man Inhabits A Realm Half In And Half Out Of Nature, His Mind Reaching Forever Beyond The Tool, The Uniformity, The Law, Into Some Realm Which Is That Of The Mind Alone.

You Think That Way As You Begin To Get Grayer And You See Pretty Plainly That The Game Is Not Going To End As You Planned.

I Was A Shadow Among Shadows Brooding Over The Fate Of Other Shadows That I Alone Strove To Summon Up Out Of The All-pervading Dusk.