(content updated: 17/Nov/2001)

Mind of Man   

I wrote it before I understood it, but valued it even then. I value it even more now that I begin to understand it. It is here because it lies at the heart of what I am and what I know. Man is defined by mind, and language is his soul.

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Mind in twilight,
     alone.
The dim world,
     formless,
swirled,
     vague,
and eddied,
     undefined.
Only the pressure
of unknown unknowing...

Under this necessity
Mind bent to give context existence,
Succeeding, gave existence content,
Gave man himself, a conscious mind
That pluralized to minds, defined.
For where is existence
where there exists no definition?
Man, without words, 
simply,
is not.

Words, these insubstantial words,
are the stuff of man's creation.
We are as gods.
Man gave himself his world,
gave tongue, 
    and light a name,
gave song, 
    and truth a meaning,
gave thought...
    and walked amongst the stars.

This thin reality we've made
to clothe the things God knows,
the things unnamed.
We say God knows, will be
and always was.
We only mean God has no need for words,
but we can know no more!

And yet these words,
that wrought in unreason gave reason form
these words
(super, sub or infra simply
the structure of man's formed intelligence?)
strive inwards
and in a new unreason
interchange the Man in men.

			Simon, in another age

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One verse of this poem appears on the Welcome of this site. If you found it opaque but remain interested, and I hope you do, I have also tried to say it another way.