Requitas

A Poem (par Anonymous):


listen—

if you are subtle enough,
you will hear me break
the Dove’s wings.

instead, I give you ravens.

someday my story
will be written in runes,
though I tried not to leave you.

here
I eclipse light
instead of breathe it.

here
I have suffered
innuendos, barely noticeable.



I am waiting for a particular de profundis. For a melancholic, it is the essentiality of knowing 'beauty.'
But not beauty like a parent calls whatever her child does 'beautiful,' instead this essentiality is one of balance. I
can't deny that sin has a beauty to it, and it's a beauty that we are obsessed with as humans. It is the source of
our greatest literature, the most magnificent works of art, music that is utterly stirring, the need for compassion,
the pursuit of significance, and cheasy things like finding answers, desiring truth,
requited love, etc, etc. But the beauty of sin isn't in the act, it is in the consequence. To exagerrate, the consequence of sin
can be romanticized: dire pain, tragedy, forlorness, futility, despair, etc. What's remarkable about the inherent fallen
state of humanity is that by the same cause we are able to experience--by consequence--brilliance, beauty, things
remarkable, spectacular. For humanity, there is nothing but sin in our experience. When we appreciate the beauty
of God, it still is in a vocabulary hedged in, refined, and defined by our sin experience. Naturally, and necessarily, we
cannot know any type of beauty that God exudes or is, only a reflection; instead we are only capable to experience
beauty as humans in terms of our sin. How remarkable.

My life, in some capacity, is a series of de profundes (although, the Latin grammar in that expression is incorrect, eh?
'de profundis' is already a plural phrase, and we can't pluralize something that's already plural in Latin, so I'm treating
the entire expression 'de profundis' as nounified, then assigning its proper plural form based on the English rule of
pluralizing direct Latinate words ending in -is by chaning it to -es...Latin's still important!), or 'de profundises.' Slowly
I come to understand what it means to be 'out of the depths,' though I am totally incapable of knowing in 'full' what
that means. In the meantime, all I have is the beauty of non-sin, the beauty of being aware of the depths in the first
place. In my education, my architecture, my photography, my relationships with those whom I love, my writing, my
perception of my environment, my conception of truth, my faith in God, I seek a de profundis becaue it is essential.
As inherent as sin is, it is not the foundation of humanity. Knowing the difference is.


Chanson du jour: Arvo Pärt, De Profundis