Hymn to Discipline

Give me discipline and give me a discipline.
"Why restriction? Life is free
For its pleasures,
And you have your pleasures."
Is there discipline in leisure?

Yes, things are free
In their necessity -- free
To fate. A bird's is the domain of air
Which she pursues with wing
In all directions. That is an image
Of liberty. But things
Move themselves to danger without rules --
Evolution is the founder of life's laws
In every circumstance.
I want that guidance and protection.

"And your pleasures? Your desires?
Can you evade them, and do you want to?
Each urge wrestles with its sweetness.
Don't you want to taste this syrup
And linger with it? We come to peace
In pleasure: the mind
Loses itself in the act,
Is not always working slantwise,
Pushes at the thing that gives."

A desire is a labor, a hard
Thing. Free me from my desires
So that I can rest, discipline.
Discipline chooses its work
And works into it. Discipline
Keeps itself moving too fast
For pleasure to gain purchase.
Discipline sweats, discipline depletes,
Disciplines uses things up
And wears them out, freeing them
For their potential --
The fulfillment of desire
Drains out of a thing, leaving it
Dirty and cold,
But discipline burns through it like a fire,
Bringing it to light and heat.

Elements

Called it the light of being,
The congery of elements
Has something to do with it: earth,
Fire, water, air --
"Call it by what it does."

The thing that stands and joins them
Is and holds the revelation. But
Is it? Are these?

The ground on which we stand,
The force that cooks our food,
Bringing us to warmth, the medium
In which we move, breathe,
The boundary of the continent
It holds and it divides
Which keeps it too -- this is the stuff
Of which the world's made.

So the Greeks. But is it? Now
What do we know? Are there only four?

"Everything is the same.
The world is the circling
Circle of its times
Compressed into a point,
Equal to itself and nowhere
Closer than it is, one
Without force or division, neither
Static nor restless, no distinction
Keeps the world from its truth."

"The world is the sum
Of moving forces, combinations of distinct
Manifestations, accidentally drawn
Into their necessary forms, which change
Like the day changes, like plants
Change, growing out of itself
Into something it is not."

Purification

I have wandered off far.
"It is only journeyings,
It is only travels."

I have strayed. What do you demand?
"What do you demand?"
Purification.

"What is purification?"

The water washes over the skin.
"You require a vessel."
The skin has been prepared with soap.
"Then where will you find the formula?"
The water returns and carries things away.

What is the water?
"The water is the light."
What is the vessel? -- Is it the body?
"But light will not come to the body."
Light comes to the eyes.

Then let the light enter,
Let it enter. The eyes are the vessel,
The water is the light.

And what is the detergent? With what
Will the light bind? Soap
Mediates the water and the dirt,
Carries the dirt into the water
And out through the water. The opposite of light
Is darkness, just as earth
Opposes water. What will stand
Between the darkness and the light
To reconcile them, bind them, let them
Fall away?