Friday, July 27, 2018

"Not Man Apart" - Robinson Jeffers



Then what is the answer?
Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.

When open violence appears,
to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.

To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness.
These dreams will not be fulfilled.

To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
appears atrociously ugly.

Integrity is wholeness, 
the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, 
the wholeness of life and all things,
the divine beauty of the universe.

Love that, not man apart from that,
or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken."

- Robinson Jeffers



"Seldom do we realize that the world is practically no thicker to us than the print of our footsteps on the path. 

Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from that under-world, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold moist ground, that these green blades have sprung."  

............Robinson Jeffers