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BY JAY WRIGHT
In a morning coat,
hands locked behind your back,
you walk gravely along the lines in your head.
These others stand with you,
squinting the city into place,
yet cannot see what you see,
what you would see
a vision of these paths,
laid out like a star,
or like a body,
the seed vibrating within itself,
breaking into the open,
dancing up to stop at the end of the universe.
I say your vision goes as far as this,
the egg of the world,
where everything remains, and moves,
holding what is most against it against itself,
moving, as though it knew its end, against death.
In that order,
the smallest life, the small event take shape.
Yes, even here at this point,
Amma's plan consumes you,
the prefigured man, Nommo, the son of God.
I call you into this time,
back to that spot
and read these prefigurations
into your mind,
and know it could not be strange to you
to stand in the dark and emptiness
of a city not your vision alone.
Now, I have searched the texts
and forms of cities that burned,
that decayed, or gave their children away,
which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you
cannot but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential
preservation; you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility
which you enjoy you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of
Heaven.
Reflect on that time.
The spirits move, even
in the events of men,
hidden in a language
that cannot hide it.
You were never lost
in the language of number alone;
you were never lost
to the seed vibrating alone,
holding all contradictions within it.
Look back, I entreat you,
over your own painful escapes.
The seed now vibrates into a city,
and a man now walks where you walked.
Wind and rain must assault him,
and a man must build against them.
We know now, too, that the house
must take the form of a man
warmth at his head, movement at his feet,
his needs and his shrine at his hands.
Image of shelter image of man
pulled back into himself
into the seed before the movement,
into the silence before the sound
of movement, into stillness,
which may be self-regard,
or only stillness.
Recall number.