[BNP/E3, 16A – 50]

p. 623 [913]

22-12-14

The Abyss[1]

Between me and my consciousness

     Is an abyss

At whose invisible bottom runs

The noise of a stream far from suns,

Whose very sound is dark and cold 

Ay, on some skin of our soul's deeming,

Cold and dark and terribly old,

Itself and not in its told seeming.

___

My hearing has become my seeing

Of that placelessly sunken stream…

Its noiseless noise is ever freeing

My thought from my thought's power to dream…

Some dread reality belongs

To that stream of mute, abstract songs

That speak of no reality

But of its going to no sea…

_______

Lo, with the eyes of my dreamed hearing

I hear the unseen river bearing

Along to where it goes not to

All things my thought is made of­ - Thought

Itself, and the World and God, who

On that impossible stream float.

_______

Ay, the ideas of God, of World,

Of Myself and of Mystery,

As if from some unknown plea[2], hurled,

Go down with that stream to that sea

It has not and shall not[3] reach

And belong to its dream‑bound motion…

Yet oh for that sun on the beach

Of that unattainable ocean!

__________

_______

 
[1] The Abyss /The Storm\
[2] plea /rampart\
[3] not /never\