WINTER ' FOURTEEN
-Another proposition
-You’re cleaver but that’s not enough to shape a life by – even with your obsession. Sooner or later
you will come up against a fact that can’t be challenged and when you do your whole world will come
crashing down about you
-And that would please you?
-Indirectly, yes
-Because?
-Because you would have to face the emptiness of your notions
-Or their acquittal – perhaps it’s the ‘facts’ as you call them which will fall
-Your pride is wilful to the point of being dangerous. Don’t you recognise any authority other than
yourself?
-What other authority can there be?
-The collective identity and strength is not to be despised. There is a wisdom in it which can’t be
refuted
-I see neither wisdom not strength
-Because you don’t know how to look
-That’s the dogma of a believer
-Whereas you…
-Whereas I am in the becoming of myself and allow myself no other dogma nor creed
-Yes, your pride is wilful. It will be your undoing
-It is the making
-But look at you – penniless and homeless –is that your vaunted freedom?
-It’s a start
-You have been a long time starting. Everything with you is in the becoming never in the now of
achievement
-Time is my ally
-No, time is the enemy waiting to ambush you
-I am armed
-O you’re not the first to say that nor will you be the last for an egoist can never understand the
lessons of history
-It has few lessons to teach me and those it has I have exhausted
-Then maybe I’m wrong – perhaps you are not wilful and arrogant but that you possess the terrible
purity of an innocence which I do not understand
-In which case…
-In which case I despair of what will become of you.
-shall I tell you
-do, o do
-but there is so much to tell
-then begin
The Linnet's Wings