OUR YOKE TO TRY: THE ODDS

OUR YOKE TO TRY: THE ODDS

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business/ ...Love is most nearly itself/ Where here and now cease to matter./ Old men ought to be explorers/ Here and there does not matter/ We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity...From “East Coker, The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Because we could not hold on to love
As it must be held, given pure and free,
We can only try to find what is most
Nearly itself, until we get to a still point.

Time does not define where that may be,
But it must linger in the mother’s breasts,
When she suckles her infant into a life
Where there is nothing but uncertainty.

How precariously certain is this mock-up
Of staying alive when it is impermanence
That most resembles it? A will-o’-the-wisp
Or a cruel mirage hounds us, it is there

But not here. Why love then, or live at all?
When uncertain weather is most certain,
Why dare fritter precious lifetime on this
Uncharted clearing? It is our yoke to try.

We will perish trying, measure dying by
How true our exploring must be, we
Cannot stop, we simply move into another
Space, with flaming eagerness or anger.

---Albert B. Casuga