A Poetic Response to John Donne
Is every man but an island unto himself,
Or are all a piece of the collective main?
Are we but atolls adrift upon the wholly
Infinite sea connected but by bridges lain
By work not of our hands but our hearts unfurled?
Is instead one life but a portrait, a window
Through which the whole of life, in both its turmoil and
Tranquility, is surreptitiously revealed?
Some may say separation is an illusion,
While others posit the opposing delusion.
Neither vantage or musing is wholly complete,
And with absolute ignorance are both replete,
For you see, my brethren, we are at once whole
And yet are a part of the universal soul.
The Universe in Fire and Fire in the Universe
I see ahead a fire upon my path.
Light does it give, illuminating streams
That are themselves but waves, just as the
Waves of the vast and burgeoning sea which reams
Upon the shoreline of the infinite.
I am grasped in the grand totality
Of the universe which in its vastness
Consists of structures of such temporality.
Yet the laws from which such smallness are derived,
Which our science ardently discovers
And fields such as chemistry do posit
Reactions our observations uncover,
Allow combustion, explaining in math,
Why I see ahead a fire upon my path.
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